


1.5.92-110

by Xairathan



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: F/F, Religious Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-27 01:00:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20939684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xairathan/pseuds/Xairathan
Summary: Jeanne Alter has made two incorrect assumptions: that the corrected Shinjuku can stay her solitary retreat, and that its streets are what might bring her closest to happiness.





	1.5.92-110

A lick of flame curls into the starless sky, the light from a hundred buildings and a thousand signs glancing off the smoke-laden heavens. At its heart, in the center of an abandoned intersection, Jeanne Alter lifts her blackened sword to a likewise darkened sky and lets her shout of rage echo over crumbling rooftops, shattering streetlamps rendered obsolete by pillars of flickering orange. Glass tumbles down over her shoulders, snags on her jacket; Jeanne Alter strides through the destruction, kicking aside shards and wayward fire alike.

Here in Shinjuku, with smoke tickling her nostrils and hot against the lining of her throat, is where Jeanne Alter finds the closest thing to peace that she knows. She herself doesn’t _ know _ Shinjuku— that had been another her, one that had disappeared with the original Singularity, but that Jeanne Alter’s memories live in her through the Throne of Heroes, and so the now-rectified Quarantined City continues to be her refuge, the place where she can let her hatred run free and wild over everything that isn’t herself.

Watching her fire dance over her fingertips, she can breathe easy, knowing no one in this city will mistake her for her original. That’s what’s driven her here, the spectre of another Frenchman stepping out from the summoning circle with a cannon hoisted over one shoulder. He’d glanced over the assembled Servants, locked eyes with Jeanne Alter, and with a quick of his lips said, “Are you truly the Holy Maiden of Orleans? I wouldn’t expect to see such a sour expression on the face of a saint.”

The wall that Jeanne Alter shouts and hurls a blazing torrent of her power at is silver, like the ones in the summoning chamber. As the structure begins to buckle, glowing orange eating away at the edges of a steadily widening hole, Jeanne Alter imagines it’s that new Archer’s smug face she’s just burned to cinders, a black smear against warped steel that she wouldn’t be bothered to clean up. It would serve him right, mistaking her for that self-righteous woman who happens to share the same appearance.

But it isn’t enough. No sooner has Jeanne Alter felt the calming coolness of the evening air in her lungs than her chest tightens and heat swirls up from where it’s lain dormant in her gut, churning over as it waits to be unleashed, a maddened crescendo of fire that shines briefly in the night, as high and bright as any of Shinjuku’s skyscrapers. That Archer is only the surface of the problem. His mistake may have been made in ignorance, but soon enough he’ll join the ranks of Servants who give her a wide berth rather than risk inviting her fire, alternating whispers of _ Jeanne Alter _ and _ the Dragon Witch _ following her through Chaldea’s halls.

(She’d never tell anyone except perhaps their Master, but she hates being called the Dragon Witch. That, she wants to think she left behind in Orleans with the rest of her first attempt at life, and Gilles, and his stupid wish. She prefers Jeanne Alter by far, even if that name comes with its own attachments to her original, and with them their own burdens).

Whatever she’s called, one thing remains the same. She always returns to Shinjuku, and she always leaves smelling of smoke, not the kind that hangs thick in the eaves of nightclubs and bars, but laden with the sweetness of seared wood and scorched stone and whatever’s in the evening air. Tonight, it’s humidity drifting in from the coast, throwing on an extra layer of discomfort to Jeanne Alter’s already damp skin. She grimaces and bears it without complaint. Heavier things weigh on her mind: the anger curdling in her stomach; the roaring of everything from her soul to her bones to make the Archer pay for his carelessness; the tempting whisper that tells her it’d be alright if she did, for the only consequences she’d face would come from a god whose existence she’s increasingly begun to doubt.

Jeanne Alter’s fingers clench tightly around her sword, trembling until her thumb twitches and locks around the hilt and has to be pried away by her other hand. It’s been like this for a while now. Sometimes she’ll wake up grasping for some remnant of a dream fading in blinks of brightness fluttering against the insides of her eyelids, her hand an unrelenting fist that has to be coaxed open to timid tremors in her palm. This is the part of herself she tries, and always fails, to lose in Shinjuku. No matter how hot her fire burns, how wide she spreads it, how much it devours, she’ll always crave more, her need to exact vengeance buried so deeply into her essence that those moments of stillness when the last of her sputtering embers turn to ash leave her achingly unfulfilled. She can’t control it; it’s as natural to her as breathing, and the only thing she can influence is whether her own flames decide to turn on her as well.

At the end of the street, a shimmering. At first, Jeanne Alter thinks it’s a haze brought on by the intensity of the inferno consuming the city around her. But it persists; it approaches, and Jeanne Alter makes out the outline of a head and shoulders, a distinctly human figure draped in flowing white. It moves too smoothly to be one of the rogue dolls that lurk in Shinjuku’s untraveled alleys, and the frame of it suggests it’s not wearing the armor of a Hornet soldier. A ghost, then, a wayward spirit seeking the person responsible for its death. That, Jeanne Alter knows all too well: after all, she’d dealt with them in Orleans after she’d been called to Chaldea (and for all that effort, her hatred did not once abate, the recognition from her fellow Servants as hollow and meaningless as the burnt-out husks of buildings they’d left behind).

“If you’re coming to try and get revenge on me, fuck off,” Jeanne Alter snaps at the figure. “You won’t fucking win, and I’m not afraid of a ghost.”

A rustling of cloth, the slightest tilt of a head. The figure, now close enough for Jeanne Alter to make out some detail, pauses where the heat of the burning building starts to cross from uncomfortable to unbearable. It’s a woman, Jeanne Alter realizes, one with white hair streaked with black, one of the newer Servants to Chaldea that had arrived a week or two earlier. Jeanne Alter hadn’t bothered to pay attention; after all, why waste time on getting to know someone who’d never speak to you again? She’d memorized the new Servants’ classes, just in case they were ever put on a mission together, and the Servant now smiling curiously at her would be that Lancer.

“So it’s just you?” Jeanne Alter lowers her sword, jamming it back into its scabbard with a rough clattering of metal. The sound grates on her ears, and yet Lancer doesn’t seem affected by it, still motionless, still smiling. This close, the rigidity of Lancer’s smile becomes obvious, her wide eyes reflecting the swaying blaze like empty windows. “What the hell do you want, then?”

And Lancer just continues to stand there, keeps smiling, keeps staring at her. Jeanne Alter’s scowl tugs down at the edges of her mouth, exposing teeth sore from being ground against each other. This is the inherent risk of choosing Shinjuku as her wandering place: there’ll always be the anomalous enemy or rising Phantom to fight. Tonight’s intruder comes from Chaldea though, and so burning her is out of the question. Well— Jeanne Alter lets a sigh hiss through her teeth and dissipate against the crackling in the air around them. It’d be just her luck that someone would catch her at her lowest, taking her anger out in the only place she can, a city that’s overstayed long past its time, persisting only through sheer force of memory— like herself. It’s time to go back, then.

Surprisingly, Lancer starts to follow after her. Jeanne Alter wheels around on the heels of her boots, flings a hand out in Lancer’s direction as if to suggest she’d set the Servant on fire, given the chance. “What do you want?” she asks again, golden eyes gleaming dangerously.

A second surprise- Lancer actually responds. “We’re both returning to Chaldea,” she says, her tone casually even, as if she’s discussing something as inconsequential as what she had for breakfast. “Why wouldn’t I take the same way as you?”

“How do you know I’m going back?”

“Where else would you go?”

“Maybe another part of Shinjuku, maybe somewhere else. None of your business.” Jeanne Alter spins back around, stomping off towards Shinjuku Station, where they’ve set up a rayshift retrieval point.

“Do you always do that?” Jeanne Alter suppresses a roll of her eyes. Oh, good— this Lancer must be one of those types that can’t shut up once they get started. “Destroying everything so wantonly with your power,” she elaborates unnecessarily. “That doesn’t seem very saintly of you.”

“The hell are you saying that for?” She shouldn’t respond, but something about Lancer’s words gets a rise out of her. Maybe it’s the comparison to Jeanne, however slight; there’s no denying that she’s in some ways a copy of her original, but a saint she is not. That had been established for her when she’d been given the title of the Dragon Witch, when she’d reached deep within herself for the first time and found her fire fueled not by any type of holy wrath as she’d believed, but the selfish and singular wish of a man whose twistedness permeates Jeanne Alter’s being as much as purity did Jeanne d’Arc’s. “Don’t you know who the fuck I am?”

“Yes,” Lancer replies. “You are Jeanne Alter, Avenger, but do you not still claim to be a holy woman?”

“Y’know what I am?” Jeanne Alter shoots back. Her hand shakes over the hilt of her sword; it would be so easy to grab it, to unleash a peal of flame too quickly for Lancer to have a chance to dodge it. She wouldn’t burn Lancer up, not all of her- just enough to send her away nursing her wounded pride and a scorched limb or two. “I’m about to toast you if you keep this annoying shit up.”

Lancer’s smile widens; she might be about to say something, but Jeanne Alter isn’t going to give her the chance. She dips into a side street, runs full-pelt through it, emerges out onto one of the main streets. A shortcut through an arcade, a nonsense turn down an alley that curves sharply, 90 degrees, and spits her out just a few blocks from Shinjuku Station. She’d like to see Lancer try and follow that. She might not be able to shake Lancer by lighting her on fire, but no one knows Shinjuku’s layout as well as—

“You do so out of frustration, then?” A happy voice chirps from nearby. Jeanne Alter’s head jerks back, her gaze pointing to the skies, and she glimpses the fluttering of Lancer’s robes as she drops down neatly from the rooftops, landing gracefully on her feet next to Jeanne Alter. “You realize there’s a training course in Chaldea you could use for such a purpose.”

“Why don’t you shut up about stuff you don’t even know about?” Jeanne Alter sneers at Lancer, taking a step closer and getting up in her face. The hair sticking up from her forehead tickles the tip of Lancer’s nose; she stifles a sneeze, blinking rapidly, and the absurdity of it all is what makes Jeanne Alter back up, not wanting to get sneezed on as much as wanting to _ get the hell away _ from this crazy Servant. “I don’t see you having a good reason for being here anyway!”

“What if I just wanted to take a look around?”

“Yeah, like I’d believe that,” Jeanne Alter scoffs. “And you just happened to come across me?”

“You weren’t hard to find. I could see the trail of smoke from kilometers away.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“You’re quite vulgar, too.”

“You disappointed?”

“I find it interesting.”

“You would,” Jeanne Alter mumbles beneath her breath. “Fucking freak.”

If Lancer seems so insistent on tailing her, then the least Jeanne Alter can do is return quickly to Chaldea and ditch her there, and hopefully come back the next night to continue venting her anger. She takes off at a run down the street, Lancer easily keeping pace beside her, not even winded as they come to a stop at the intersection in front of the station and get carried off by the tug of the Rayshift lifting them up past the clouds.

They land back in Chaldea, and Lancer is still fucking smiling. Jeanne Alter has to bite back the urge to ask if her face ever gets tired, or if she’s just glued that damn expression in place to save some effort. Lancer’s noticed Jeanne Alter’s eyes on her; she must’ve interpreted it as intrigue or an invitation, for she says, “I am Uesugi Kenshin or Nagao Kagetora, Lancer, god of war and Dragon of Echigo.” At least she doesn’t try and say it’s been nice to meet Jeanne Alter, but what follows is worse: “I’ll be exploring Shinjuku from now on too, so do you think you could try not to burn down the whole city before I’ve had the chance to see it?”

“You mean I’ll have to see even more of you?”

“I think we both know that depends on you.” Lancer lifts a hand, waves it back and forth stiffly a few times in Jeanne Alter’s direction. “But I already know what to expect. So, until we meet again, Jeanne Alter.”

Lancer strides off through the command room doors, the sleeves of her robes just clearing them before they begin to slide shut again. Jeanne Alter stays rooted on the rayshift platform, scowling at the place where Lancer had just been. Shinjuku’s no one’s territory anymore; it’s a blip in the timestream that comes and goes, but Jeanne Alter had been used to calling it her city, a safe haven that even Chaldea can’t be to her. Now this Lancer is coming in and ruining it, and it looks like she won’t be so easily gotten rid of. Jeanne Alter shakes her head to clear it, decides to wait a little longer to go back into the corridors, so at least there won’t be the chance she’ll run into that goddamn Lancer again. Ashes fall from her hair and from her jacket, gather on the floor around her in a neat little wreath, The scent of smoke and sweat wafts up at her; Jeanne Alter breathes it in, the pounding of her heart lessening slightly at the faint tinge of burnt metal beneath it all.

* * *

When her fire burns too hot or too much, Jeanne Alter dreams of Shinjuku. Lines of golden lights streak against the blackness of her eyelids, blurring together with the asphalt rushing up towards her feet. These are less dreams than some attempt at resolution between herself and her memories, lingering echoes that call to her wandering mind from the Throne of Heroes.

An empty alley, an equally lifeless street. This is where Jeanne Alter makes her stand— not because she wants to, but because she knows that’s how it was. The Jeanne Alter who’d lived in Shinjuku had fought the Hessian Lobo to a standstill here, barely escaping with her life, an inferno that shattered windows with its heat striving to devour the maddened wolf whose fangs dug deep into Jeanne Alter’s body, two Avengers tearing at one another with the only means they knew of.

The Lobo in her dream skids to a stop, flames blazing from his eyes. The rider atop him leans forward, shadows billowing out from under his flowing cape. This is how it goes: the wolf lunges, too fast to be seen, teeth sinking into her chest. Jeanne Alter ignores the pain: no wound to her heart, no matter how dire, could ever surpass the feeling of her own hatred gnawing away at her from the inside out, inescapable. With his jaws locked around her, there’s no escape for Lobo any longer, and they burn together—

Or that’s how Jeanne Alter remembers it happening.

Perhaps her mistake is trying to change that. She lunges backward as Lobo’s jaws start to close around her, and that’s when the rider on his back strikes, twisted claws of fabric curling tight around her like claws, tearing easily through her skin, anchoring themselves between her ribs, in her lungs. Yes, that’s her mistake— trying to defy the memories of someone who is still herself, an exercise as futile as trying to satiate her vengeful hunger. Now her chest aches; it’s no longer the tattered edges of a cloak that dig into her, but iron stakes, piercing through her armor and holding her limbs in place as her own power roars around her, an elegy in orange and black.

The smoke closes in around her, obscuring Hessian Lobo from sight. In the shifting shadows, the outlines of another memory not her own, but not from another version of herself, either. A leering priest sentences her to death, and Jeanne Alter screams wordless defiance until her throat is raw, the hatred in her body pouring out in a rippling cascade. This is no _ La Pucelle _ of her original’s, but if Jeanne Alter is to die, she might as well take those who condemned her to hell with her—

Jeanne Alter opens her eyes, hair plastered to her forehead, skin damp and clinging to the sheets. She throws herself upright, presses her hands to her stomach— nothing, no blood, just sweat.

Well, she had overused her fire in Shinjuku. What else did she expect?

The longer she sits in the stillness of her room, the more uneven her breathing grows. There’s the outline of the door, and all four corners, but the spaces in between shift and writhe, and at any moment something might step through into reality, perhaps a shrewd priest with her death sentence in hand, or a black-clad Caster with a golden cup.

Jeanne Alter balls a hand into a fist and drives it as hard as she can into the mattress. Again, again, until her knuckles are red and aching, her hand shaking with familiar rage. Even asleep, in the space that should belong entirely to herself alone, her original’s influence creeps in and shatters that tentative peace Jeanne Alter has tried to make with herself. No matter what she does, the fate of her original is written into her body, and and even her name. The only part of her that Jeanne d’Arc does not touch is her soul— that’s Gilles’ domain, his hatred for the France and the God that had turned their back on Jeanne seeping into every bit of her essence, indistinguishable from Jeanne Alter’s own bitterness.

The only hatred that Jeanne Alter knows to be her own is that which is meant for her. That loathsome wish that called her into existence, woven into the fiber of her being- that would be what she hates most. She clings to that knowledge even as she despises her reliance on it; this is the contradiction that belongs to Jeanne Alter: how could a person created and driven by hate ever regard herself with anything different? How could someone whose origin is betrayal and whose affection is destruction ever hope to find any meaningful connection?

Those are the thoughts that plague Jeanne Alter as she drifts back off to an uneasy sleep, still exposed to the air, her violent shivering soon replaced by the jut of rigid tendons and sweat once again beading on her forehead, her arms, where the burn scars have only just started to fade.

The Shinjuku her mind visits is entirely her own this time. Jeanne Alter runs not from Lobo, but from ravenous flames that pursue her with single-mindedly, so similar to her own save for the one that directs them. From the rooftops, an eerie and incessant laughter that pours forth from an equally unchanging smile: the Lancer, the god who now roams Shinjuku, the answer to all of Jeanne Alter’s boasting come to judge her at last, for now there is a god, and divine punishment is upon her.

* * *

In Kagetora’s time, she could never have imagined the city of Edo would grow to be this size. Shinjuku’s sprawl is a maze of new discoveries, a place that never truly rests, where Kagetora in her robes is no stranger a fixture than the walls of various neon signs suspended off the high-rises lining the streets or strangely-dressed humans, transformed like Shinjuku itself into a product of the night.

Tonight, something other than aimless wandering has caught Kagetora’s interest. Only a Servant’s sharp eyes could pick out the pale legs dangling over the side of a skyscraper overlooking Shinjuku Station, and so that’s where Kagetora goes. A few long jumps brings her up to Jeanne Alter’s vantage point, a place overlooking the heart of Shinjuku, the skyline obscured only by the silvery outline of the metropolitan building some ways in the distance.

Jeanne Alter has her legs pulled tight to her chest when Kagetora arrives, her eyes not wavering from the stream of humans below, small knots of them forming in front of bars and others breaking away to sneak into darkened side streets. She could reach out a hand and close it, and have the lifeblood of Shinjuku in her fist. Kagetora doesn’t speak immediately, not wanting to disrupt the tenuous calm strung across the space between them, Jeanne Alter yet unaware of her presence. Here she can watch the sweep of Jeanne Alter’s eyes over the city, flitting restlessly from place to place, taking in everything at once and yet seeking nothing in particular.

When Kagetora does announce herself, it’s with a simple question: “Aren’t you cold up here?” Predictably, Jeanne Alter whirls to face her, hand clenching in the empty space over her hip.

“You again. Can’t you leave me alone?”

“Apparently not.” Kagetora inclines her head, takes in the sight of thinly narrowed eyes. There’s still a frown on Jeanne Alter’s face, but less pronounced. She takes it to mean her presence is unwelcome; she’d never be capable of realizing that Jeanne Alter has come up here specifically for the cold, a means of escaping her fire without needing to satisfy it, the chill on her skin cooling her anger into muted discontent.

“There’s plenty of other places you can go if you want a good view. Get lost.”

“What is there to look at?”

“Don’t play dumb.” Jeanne Alter snorts, flings a hand out in the direction of the city as carelessly as calling forth fire. “You do the same thing that I do, watching these humans. Do you know what kind of place this was when it was a Singularity?” Kagetora shakes her head— Shinjuku was far before her time, and those few Servants who know what happened behind those quarantine walls rarely speak of it. “It was cut off from the rest of the world. Everything went to shit real fast. The only humans who survived were the worst kind of them all, and you’d expect people like that to keep on fighting and killing until there’s no one left, right? But once the dust settled, there were plenty of humans still standing. What do you think that says about them, huh?”

“That still doesn’t explain what interest you have in them, Jeanne Alter.”

“Why’s it matter to you?” Jeanne Alter waves her hand in Kagetora’s direction, a casual flick of her fingers, not so much a threat as a promise of being burned if Kagetora keeps pestering her. “Maybe I just find it funny. I mean, look at all of them, laughing and joking around with each other down there. Then give them the chance, and they’ll be at each others’ throats, and those who aren’t will be working together to hunt down the rest.” Jeanne Alter’s lips quirk upwards, a rare smile of amusement. “And people say I’m the one who’s insane.”

“Is that why you come here so often, because it makes you feel better?”

“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here, ‘god of war’?” retorts Jeanne Alter. “What’re you doing in such a depraved place like this? Don’t you have better places to be, like, I dunno. A shrine, a tea ceremony, some fancy thing far away from here?”

“I’m a servant from Japan. It would only make sense that I be curious how this country is like in the modern age.” Kagetora lets her gaze drift over overlapping rows of flashing signs, settling on Jeanne Alter. “But now I’ve found something else to occupy my attention.”

“Yeah?” Jeanne Alter bristles, tugging at the edges of her jacket, yanking them tighter around herself. “Don’t expect much.”

Kagetora merely brushes her robes aside, taking a seat on the skyscraper next to the Alter. No sooner has she settled in place than it’s Jeanne Alter’s turn to say, “Why’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Sit next to me. You know I can just shove you over if I wanted, right?”

“You could,” Kagetora agrees. “But won’t.”

“And why not?” Jeanne Alter laughs. “You don’t fucking know me. What makes you think I won’t do it?”

“For the same reason I’m not mindlessly challenging you or any other Servant to a fight every time we meet,” Kagetora replies. “I am the god of war, and so I enjoy a proper challenge. It would only make sense that someone like yourself would want to enjoy the destruction she wreaks to the fullest.”

“You-!” There’s the familiar glint of rage in Jeanne Alter’s eyes, one Kagetora knows all too well. She’d seen it in the eyes of her foes when she was alive, those fleeting glimpses of an emotion she could neither feel nor grasp, the only thing she knows of it that it yields all too quickly to despair when Kagetora is near. But Jeanne Alter is an odd case: she’s always looked angry whenever Kagetora has seen her, be it in Shinjuku or in Chaldea, and that’s what interests Kagetora. If she could understand Jeanne Alter, perhaps she could finally understand something that had eluded her for her entire life.

Jeanne Alter’s hand sweeps clumsily at the front of her robes; Kagetora merely bats it aside, provoking a snarl and a growl of, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Kagetora smiles at Jeanne Alter, as she knows she should. “I’m just someone like you.”

“And what’s that mean?”

“Our natures are the same. I revel in fighting, you in the destruction that it brings. It’s who we are. Or am I mistaken?”

For a moment, it’s as if a tiny portion of Shinjuku has frozen in time. Jeanne Alter doesn’t move; Kagetora isn’t sure if she even breathes. The air between them grows deathly still, almost as if it’s been sucked away to prepare for the flames that will follow in the space it had once been. A strangeness flutters over Jeanne Alter’s face, quickly replaced by a jagged smile and harsh, long laughter, rolling against the dark underbelly of the clouded sky like thunder.

“I knew it!” she cackles, “I’m the only fucking sane one here in this place, aren’t I?” She brings the heat of her gaze down upon Kagetora, who feels none of it. To her, it registers as a glare and nothing more, an expression of something entirely foreign and incomprehensible, easily shrugged off and forgotten. “Why would you even want to compare yourself to someone like me?”

“What would be wrong with that?” Kagetora answers Jeanne Alter’s question with one of her own as she rises, gathering her robes around her. Clearly, there’s nothing more to be gained from staying here, and doing so would likely make Jeanne Alter more hostile towards her.

“For someone claiming to be a god, you’re as dumb as a brick,” Jeanne Alter spits. “Did you get whacked too many times in the head when you were alive? Because it’s obvious! Do you see any other Servants going around and getting off to destroying shit? No, because it’s not normal! That’s why I’m an Avenger, but you, you’re a fucking Lancer! You shouldn’t be saying that shit!”

“But why not say it if it’s true?” Kagetora shrugs. “Besides, for someone like you, I thought you would be flattered to be compared to a god.” She grins, and there’s that odd quiver of Jeanne Alter’s expression again. Kagetora lingers for a long breath, waiting for the Alter to say something, but all that answers Kagetora is the hollowness in Jeanne Alter’s eyes and the trembling of her clenched fists. With nothing more on the rooftop to keep her there, Kagetora leaps back down the way she came, robes flapping in the wind around her.

There’s still much of the city left unexplored, but Kagetora leaves it behind, dropping down to street level and melding rapidly with the rest of the crowds. To continue tonight would be a waste, when whatever she found would be contaminated by the taint of disappointment. For once, Kagetora had thought she’d found someone like her: someone who loved to fight, not a god, but equally distant from humans; not a protector, but just as feared. That same fear is what had shone, bright and fragile, in Jeanne Alter’s frozen stare. Only human then, Kagetora thinks, and notes with slight surprise the disappointment weighing on her chest, the downward tugging of the corners of her mouth.

No, that isn’t right.

Kagetora steps into the mouth of an alley, faces the darkness. A couple of blinks, a few measured breaths. There— her usual smile slots itself back into place, and Kagetora continues on her way. A few more blocks, and the Rayshift will take her back to Chaldea. She will return to her room and meditate on what she’s seen, as is expected of her. She will not allow her smile to waver, no matter how frequently the Avenger resurfaces in her thoughts, nor how deep the blow that Jeanne Alter has unwittingly struck in telling the god of war that even in this gathering place of unlikely spirits, she will still and always be held as separate, alone.

* * *

It’s strangely peaceful in Shinjuku, and oddly quiet in Chaldea. The reason for that: Jeanne Alter hasn’t left her room for several days. Before her eyes flash alternating lights; in her dreams roars the symphonic neons of Shinjuku’s signs, which crumble into tamer orange lapping impatiently at the tips of her fingers, keeping her body warm, like sunlight guiding her back from the depths of her memories with searing radiance. Still, she can’t both keep her fire going and go without rest at the same time. For once, she welcomes the shiftings of familiar ghosts along the walls. Better an evil she knows intimately well than the one that stalks through Chaldea and Shinjuku, probably looking for Jeanne Alter even now.

Jeanne Alter rolls onto her side, presses herself against the sheets with a miniscule trembling. Even if she did manage to find the sleep that eludes her, it would provide no more sanctuary than her room. Dreams of fire are now joined by a figure that walks among the flames in white, wielding a brilliant sword— fuck, what was that Angel’s name? Michael, Camael, Uriel? A shake of her head, a groan pushed through aching teeth.

No matter what she does in those dreams, Jeanne Alter can never win. She’s beaten Lobo, immolated Gilles, laughed as infernos danced around herself and her original, but Jeanne Alter knows nothing of what it might take to beat Kagetora, or even if she could be defeated at all. What she does remember is her unshakable pursuit, the unflagging smile that always adorns her face, and a single word that resonates in Jeanne Alter’s mind: inhuman.

Anyone who could look at Jeanne Alter and say with such certainty that nothing was wrong with her couldn’t possibly be human. Kagetora is by no means evil, as Jeanne Alter would describe herself to be, nor is she insane. A madman would have no reason to smile so unceasingly, which leaves only one possibility, one Jeanne Alter hates that she’s arrived at. The only explanation for Kagetora’s behavior is that she’s possessed of some compulsion like Jeanne Alter’s, a thought that sends an angry groan drifting up to join the faint wisps of smoke spiraling in wide circles around the ceiling.

Something had to have carved that smile out of Kagetora’s face. Jeanne Alter can only wonder what it could be. Was the slow ebb of constant war against Kagetora’s soul? Or was it something as violent as a betrayal in the form of a wish, the world itself rewritten in a single breath, her first breath, inhaled upon a battlefield and released into the same wind that her ashes (no, not truly hers) had been flung into?

Maybe it was. There’s a bit of Gilles in her, now that Jeanne Alter considers it. Slavishly devoted to an idea, this concept of the ‘god of war’, and had she ever not been smiling? But that’s where the similarities end. Gilles wouldn’t have dared to think a single slight against his beloved Jeanne, Alter or not. Kagetora had all but declared her contempt for her fellow Servants that night, called Jeanne Alter weak to her face and walked away unscathed. What’s worse: she isn’t wrong. The legacy that other Jeanne Alter had left behind is one of futile fighting, the most she’d accomplished being buying their Master some time.

Her one comfort is that Kagetora has not seen through her. It would seem that two unnatural creations would be able to understand each other, but how could they? After all, war is all that Kagetora knows, and destruction its fruits. For Jeanne Alter, destruction is her life and her purpose, the only happiness granted to her in a world she was created to hate, and compelled to annihilate. Satisfaction comes to her not through friendship, but through the sight and sound of metal and souls warping under her fires, and to look for it in anything else would be foolish.

And it clicks— so that’s what Kagetora had wanted. Even the Lord God had created for himself a son and a spirit, and the host of the heavens. Who does Kagetora have, other than herself and that god whose name she’s taken for herself? A lonely god and a corrupted holy woman. It might have been a good match, were they in any way different from who they are, but it’s impossible. Jeanne Alter seeks no conversation but the howls of those she burns, no company but the lingering doubts that haunt her mind alongside dreams of distant memories.

Jeanne Alter rises, pushes her way through the dimness of her room towards the door. She’s been lax lately; today, she’ll visit Shinjuku again, and start her trail of ruin where she finds Kagetora. A subtle hiss, the click of Jeanne Alter’s boots against the floor. There will be nothing for Kagetora to find in Jeanne Alter, and perhaps the sooner she knows that, the sooner she’ll leave Shinjuku and let Jeanne Alter continue her work undisturbed.

(In the echoes of her steps, the lingering remnants of doubt, coming off her like embers: a confession she refuses to acknowledge, unspoken even before God. If she is to yearn for such complete devastation, it’d be useless to try and grow close to anyone. Better to crush those thoughts before they can grow into anything more; better to ignore that part of herself that brought her back in the first place, calling soundlessly for anyone to stay by her, even if it’s a god as cold and cruel as the wish that had brought her to life.)

* * *

Kagetora’s found on a street not far from where she and Jeanne Alter had first come face to face, almost as if she’d been waiting to meet her. “I’m surprised to see you again,” she says, her tone level enough that Jeanne Alter mistakes it for mockery, her right hand twitching towards her hip.

“What, you think I’m gonna let you run me out of my own city?” Jeanne Alter laughs, taking in deep breaths of Shinjuku’s humid air, vibrating with the life of the town and its own latent energy. “I don’t know if that’s how you did things in Japan in the old days, but if it is, I’m not playing along.”

“I thought you might’ve had some sense scared into you.” Kagetora leaps down from the balcony she’d been standing on, catching herself lightly on the balls of her feet, a silent landing that sparks a pang of jealousy. Jeanne Alter tells herself she doesn’t care for style or grace, but Kagetora moves with such an effortlessness that it draws Jeanne Alter’s eyes in regardless of where she wants to be looking. She draws herself up in front of Jeanne Alter, gazing down at her, a hint of patience bordering on mirth in her smile. “When people run from me, they usually don’t come back looking for me.”

“I didn’t fucking run,” snaps Jeanne Alter. “You’re the one who left me up there on that skyscraper.”

“You haven’t come to Shinjuku in several days.”

“Yeah? Maybe I just wanted a break. Ever heard of a break, you shitty Lancer? I bet you haven’t.” Jeanne Alter forces her shoulders down, twists her snarl into a look of vague discontent, though a light like warm cinders flickers dangerously behind her eyes. “I’m not like those humans you like watching, so don’t think you can try and predict me like I’m one of them.”

“You don’t think of yourself as human?” Kagetora’s bangs drape over her eyes; it’d be comical if her stare wasn’t so blank, if her eyes hadn’t widened slightly at those words. Gilles, she reminds Jeanne Alter of Gilles again, and within her chest her fire roars, as if to beg its freedom.

“So do you!” Jeanne Alter shouts, and realizes too late she’s given herself away. Her sword is in her hand before Kagetora has even finished wrapping her words around an inquisitive, _ why?_, the blade trembling with pale gold creeping towards the tip. “Why do you want to know? You don’t care about anything that’s not fighting, so why ask?”

“I don’t have to be human to want to know more about something, do I?” Kagetora steps back, cool air rushing in to fill the void, stinging Jeanne Alter’s cheeks. The wind curls around Jeanne Alter’s sword, smothering the flames, and with it a lull in her rage.

This isn’t what she’d expected. Jeanne Alter had come to drive Kagetora out from her city, not to debate the question of her own humanity. But then, who better to discuss it with? Kagetora won’t return to Chaldea and speak of it to others, might not even know what to make of it. In a sense, it’ll be absolution: Jeanne Alter will rid herself of one of her many unspoken doubts, offering up her confession to a god, and see what Kagetora decides to do with it.

“Fine,” Jeanne Alter mutters, and a second later: “Kenshin.” The name leaves her lips as a quivering sound, half loathing, half plea.

“Kagetora,” Kagetora says in turn, her smile never wavering.

“Okay! Kagetora, whatever, you happy?” The fervor of the Shinjuku night races through Jeanne Alter’s body for a moment, her heart pounding in her ears. This is a mistake; it’ll just be another one that she’ll have to live with, because Jeanne Alter is not one for backing down, even now. “I was made because some idiot obsessed with my original decided that he wanted her back, but no, he wanted her better, too. And by better, I mean he wanted someone who’d take revenge on France and God with him, but guess what? My original’s a saint, so she doesn’t have that kind of evil in her. I’m what he gets. The next best thing. Made from scratch, one hundred percent evil, except I have that stupid saint’s face, and all her memories. Then that master from Chaldea comes and fixes that up, but I-”

Jeanne Alter feels her voice catch on a snag in her throat. There’s a stinging in her eyes, even though she’s not yet called on her fire. A watery glare at Kagetora yields nothing: Kagetora’s expression remains unchanged, down to the angle of her head, waiting for Jeanne Alter to continue.

“I wanted to live, so I did. My own selfishness is what allowed me to get summoned. I clawed my way back from whatever hell I got sent to because I wanted to be here.”

“That sounds human enough.”

“Does it?” Now Jeanne Alter is the one stepping forward, sheathing her sword to bring shaking fingers before Kagetora’s eyes, clenched into a fist. “Then how about this? I’m not human. I’m a hedonistic, selfish abomination created for one purpose only, to take revenge on this entire world and burn it until there’s nothing left. From the moment I was made, I never stood a chance. I didn’t get to decide what I wanted, that was chosen for me. I’m an idea that relies on Jeanne d’Arc to exist, but it was impossible for me to exist in the first place. And yet, here I am, because I wanted to live so badly that even the fucking natural order couldn’t keep me down.”

Jeanne Alter’s fist finds the rim of Kagetora’s armor, seizes it, brings the taller Lancer down to eye level. “Now tell me I’m fucking human,” she hisses, the gold in her eyes taking on a red-orange tint. “Or get the fuck out of my city, because if you think for a second I’m running from you, you’re gonna be disappointed.”

Kagetora is still for several long breaths, simply watching Jeanne Alter, taking her in. When she does move, it’s to grab Jeanne Alter’s hand with hers, squeezing until Jeanne Alter relinquishes her hold on Kagetora’s armor and jerks her hand back, rubbing it to try and ease her aching knuckles.

“Then you’ll have to be disappointed as well,” Kagetora says airily. “The god of war retreats from nothing. I suppose we’ll both have to settle for sharing this place, then.” The miniscule widening of Kagetora’s smile doesn’t go unnoticed. Jeanne Alter freezes, hand ready to dart back for her sword at a moment’s notice, but Kagetora merely shrugs and turns back towards the station. “You’ve given me much to consider, Jeanne Alter. So, for the rest of tonight, I won’t infringe on your peace any longer.”

“Yeah?” Jeanne Alter shouts after her retreating back. “That sounds like you’re fucking running to me!”

Kagetora doesn’t reply, doesn’t even register that she’d heard Jeanne Alter. Soon, the whisper of her robes and her heels against the asphalt fades from hearing, and Jeanne Alter is left with the city to herself and the taste of hollow victory salty against her tongue. No— that’s not it. Jeanne Alter strums quaking fingers over her cheek, and they shine when she pulls them away. Alone, she doesn’t have to hold back the heat that’s built behind her eyes any longer.

Jeanne Alter staggers over to an alleyway, leans up against a wall and lets it take her weight. She will not sink to her knees; that’s something her original would do, not her, but even from this higher vantage point the splatter of clear liquid over the toes of her boots is painfully visible.

For once, she’s told someone the truth, and this is her reward: the raw and aching fluttering of her heart against her ribs, seeking an impossible escape, and the whispering beginnings of something Jeanne Alter refuses to put a name to. She knows it well; the Count of Monte Cristo always spoke of it to her before she drove him away, but Jeanne Alter will not be caught kindling _ hope _ of all things, much less of any kind that Kagetora might keep to what she’d said. Those who spend enough time around Jeanne Alter inevitably leave. It’s written as surely as the stars in the sky (stars that never grace Shinjuku with all the light and clouds). Not even Jeanne Alter can stand herself, so why would anyone else? To dare think otherwise is to open herself up even further, and bear the risk of pain.

Try as she might, Jeanne Alter does not leave the alley. Her feet refuse to move, and her hand still tingles with the ghostly warmth of Kagetora’s touch, as harsh as it had been. Indecisiveness seizes her steps, chills her breath. For once, Jeanne Alter doesn’t know what she wants; even the basest urge to destroy has been taken from her for this moment. All she feels is the terrifying weakness in her knees, seeping up through her legs into her chest and rooting itself beside her heart, a pressure like a heavy stone dragging one choked sob after another into brief but tormented existence.

* * *

Kagetora steps out of Shinjuku Station and breathes in the cool air, so much sweeter and nowhere near as stifling as Chaldea in spite of the tightly packed sidewalks. She understands, or thinks she does, why Jeanne Alter comes here so often. Here the buzz of humanity surrounds and drowns out the strangeness of a Servant’s presence with its monotony. Here, Jeanne Alter can blend in amongst the crowds if she so chooses, or disappear down to some vacant and slumbering quarter to set abandoned buildings ablaze, adding a layer of sirens to the midnight city’s ambient hum.

A different reason has pulled Kagetora here. Normally, she would be sitting at some crossroads in Chaldea, watching Servants come and go, ever-newer things unfolding before her watchful eyes. She would learn from them, if only she could pay them any attention. Lately, her thoughts have gravitated towards one Servant alone, one she’s followed here to Shinjuku.

Humans have been an enigma to Kagetora since her birth, but this Alter she’s following is even more of a mystery. Someone driven entirely by an emotion Kagetora can’t comprehend— now that’s worth Kagetora’s attention and the many hours she’s spent in thought in Chaldea, staring blankly at a wall, no one paying her any mind. It’s just Kagetora being weird again, after all.

Even if Kagetora can’t understand Jeanne Alter’s unbridled rage, she can appreciate the magnitude of it. That’s why she’d been sent away to a monastery in the first place, the uncontrolled strength of her youth terrifying even her own family. Not even that had been able to quell the violent rampages of the future god of war, but there she had learned when to direct that energy, how to let it guide her weapons. Jeanne Alter wouldn’t be able to last two seconds in a monastery without trying to burn it down, but perhaps a similar concept would do. Yes, that’s what Kagetora’s decided. If even someone as feared and seemingly incorrigible as herself could be given direction with a simple application of morals, then the same might be true of Jeanne Alter.

Kagetora walks out from the city’s center, following winding paths that put packed bars and throbbing lights to her back. A deeper cold has settled over Shinjuku: the promise of winter. A few more months, and the concrete barriers and metal chains that Kagetora walks beside will be laden with frost. How would Jeanne Alter’s fire handle that? She catches that aimless thought and pushes it aside, focusing on looking for any trace of the Alter, and finds it in a delicate trail of broken glass winding down a darkened road, its lights all punctured out by some sharp object.

Jeanne Alter is at the end, crouched low over the remains of what looks like a humanoid automaton, picking at its broken form with the edge of her sword. Her eyes gleam in the darkness as Kagetora approaches, her arm lifting instinctively in front of her before lowering slowly, though the point of her blade still lingers in Kagetora’s direction.

“You’re back.” Jeanne Alter surveys her warily, rising to her full height and giving the hilt of her sword a light toss. “The hell do you want now, Kenshin?”

“Back to calling me that?” Kagetora cranes her head at the disassembled automaton, its empty skull casing aimed balefully skyward. “What’s that?”

“Just a leftover from the old Shinjuku. I took care of it. You gonna answer my question or not?”

“I came to offer advice.”

“The hell would I want your advice for?”

“You must have come to me for a reason last time.” Kagetora watches Jeanne Alter shift with growing discomfort, trying to settle herself in a stance that’s simultaneously intimidating and uncaring. She ends up with one hand shoved in a pocket and the other gesturing emphatically with her sword.

“Maybe I just wanted to get some shit off my chest, ever consider that? No, wait, of course you wouldn’t.” Jeanne Alter laughs sharply, a harsh scraping of her voice over the nearby concrete walls. “You know what, I need a laugh. Go ahead, what’s this advice that’s so important you just _ had _ to come here and tell me?”

“It’s simple. You need to learn some virtue. For one, restraint-”

Kagetora feels the heat in the air a moment before the concrete at her feet ignites, Jeanne Alter’s expression distorted by the fluttering haze into a wretched snarl. Her tone carries with it a darker ripple, a promise of a conflagration should Kagetora provoke her further. “Is that all?” Jeanne Alter shouts, her blade alight with dancing flames and pointed squarely at Kagetora’s chest. “That’s what you came here for? Just to say that?”

“You wouldn’t injure yourself as much, and perhaps be more approachable if you would just-”

“Where do you get off on telling me that I need to learn to control myself?” Jeanne Alter advances, her clothes catching, her jacket falling neatly from around her shoulders into two perfect lines of ash that gather at her heels. Soft fabric yields to metal armor and a circular flourish of the blackened sword as sparks wind their way up Jeanne Alter’s hands. The hilt returns to a palm covered by a rigid gauntlet, pointed knuckle segments like dragons’ horns trembling under the labor of gripping it so tightly. “I know how you are. I’ve seen you fight. You don’t have any fucking idea what ‘holding back’ means yourself!”

“I have no need to.” Kagetora replies. “I am the avatar of Bishamonten, the god of war. If I must fight, then I do so with the intent to win.”

“What’s all that about anyway?” Jeanne Alter’s sword dips curiously, cautiously. “You don’t actually believe you’re a god, or are you fucking crazy?”

“Nothing as crude as that. I was simply born possessed of an unnatural strength. My family sent me to a monastery so that I might learn how to use that strength to guide humanity.” Kagetora’s smile slackens, eyes clouding over with something that might look like nostalgia. No one, alive or dead, knows Nagao Kagetora well enough to understand that faint pinching of her features that means pain, not of the flesh but of the soul. Kagetora does not know sadness, so the name of that sickness that rakes at her chest every time she thinks of the fear in her family’s eyes continues to elude her. This is as much a part of the heart of Echigo’s god of war as the ‘correct’ way she’d been taught to smile and the righteous path she was told to walk: the unbridgeable distance between herself and even those supposed to be closest to her.

“One day before I went off to battle, I was trying to decide what weapons to bring with me. Then my eyes fell upon the statue of Bishamonten at the castle shrine, and I understood. I would bring all my weapons and fight, and allow Bishamonten to guide my steps.”

“That’s it?” Jeanne Alter scoffs. “You saw a god’s statue on a bad day and decided to steal his identity?”

“Is it theft if something is given to you?”

“You don’t really expect me to think some god decided to give you his power because you were just really fucking good with a spear.”

“No, but— what is it those humans call it? Faith?” Jeanne Alter’s sword jerks up and down, a half-slash at the empty air beside her thigh. “Their fear and faith combined and made me into this god of war. Even my some of my enemies believed it. You would know that well, what the belief of humans can do.”

“And that’s why you think of yourself as different from them? ‘Cause your family sent you off to go learn to fight and that became all you know, and you fought so hard you became a god?” Jeanne Alter shakes her head, and there on her face is a look Kagetora knows all too well, the one her enemies always wore before she cut them down.

“I lived my life among others, but I never truly understood them.” Kagetora glances at the starless sky, sightlessly recalling the silvered constellations her men had looked to for luck and the north star. She had never seen the merit in such an exercise, and the one time she’d tried to join them, saw none of what they said; no parted lovers, no supine gods. “I spent my days guiding some and fighting others, but I was never close to any of them. I had a rival—” Kagetora pauses, recalls the taste of bitter tea souring in her mouth when her retainer had burst in to tell her that Shingen was dead— “but he was merely someone with the same aspirations as I.”

“That’s such a bullshit excuse!” Jeanne Alter flings her sword arm in an arc towards the ground, cinders scattering off the back of her gauntlet in a cascade of glowing orange. “You’re not even a real god, then! Just a human who got a bunch of people thinking the same way as your fucked-up head!”

The howl of a coming wind surges around them, pushing Kagetora’s robes back, Jeanne Alter’s hair whipping frantically against the sides of her face. The earnest gleam of Kagetora’s eyes is reflected in the madness in Jeanne Alter’s, pupils narrowed into the slits that had earned her the name of _ Dragon Witch_. “Why’d I even bother spilling my guts to you if you were just going to ignore everything I told you?” she screams, bringing her other hand up to grasp the pommel of her sword. “You’re not a fucking god of war; you’re not anything special! You’re just a freak who took the name of a god as a half-assed excuse for why you can’t understand anyone, who thinks fighting will connect you to people, and you don’t even get that’s why everyone in Chaldea can’t fucking stand you!”

Jeanne Alter’s blackened sword whistles high over her head, coming down at Kagetora with all her frenzied grief. It had been for nothing, then. The agony of telling someone the truth for once, lost in a sea of thousands of other uneventful conversations. Had it even registered to Kagetora, anything that Jeanne Alter had said?

A long blade with multiple points intercepts Jeanne Alter’s strike: Kagetora’s spear, called to one hand, a katana in the other. She forces Jeanne Alter’s sword to the side and stands, one weapon held out at either side, shoulders squared as the heady thrill of battle begins to seep into her. A familiar confidence suffuses her form, yet one that Jeanne Alter knows nothing of. That sureness belongs to her original, to that smug sense of righteousness she shares with Kagetora. For a moment, she can see it: not Kagetora, but Jeanne d’Arc that stands opposing her, not a spear but a flowing banner, white robes becoming white armor, divinity in human form—

Jeanne Alter roars, a cry fit to make her throat raw, and charges her. Kagetora gives no ground, circling around her, her weapons moving in blurs of silver and the red of the fires growing at their feet. “You think you aren’t human because you’re lonely? Is that supposed to make me feel bad for you?”

A two-handed swipe falls just short, Kagetora hopping just out of range. Jeanne Alter runs after her, the pounding of her feet against the concrete rattling up through her boots and into her bones. For the first time since Shinjuku was corrected, Jeanne Alter feels fully at home, truly alive. No longer does her fury have to wash aimlessly over a city no longer deserving of it. It’s found its home in Kagetora, drives Jeanne Alter towards her with her blade singing of fire and her shaking gauntlets clamoring their approval.

“You think if you get people you’re suddenly going to have someone to talk to? Well, you’re wrong!” A lamppost crashes down between the two; Jeanne Alter leaps over it nimbly, sword held over her head with both arms. It crashes down against Kagetora’s katana, and she’s left wide open for Kagetora’s spear to swing in, the back half of it landing firmly against her ribs and sending her sprawling into a nearby building. She’s sure she feels something clicking in her chest when she rises, but that can be ignored. Right now, she has one goal only, to make Kagetora feel something even she could understand. Not even a god is immune to feeling pain or the ravenous hunger of fire.

“I understand people just fine! And look at me! Running around a city like this just to try and be happy, until you showed up and ruined even that for me! And then you had to go and say you’re like me, and I thought maybe that Master brat had summoned someone who could get me, but no, it’s just you. I tell you everything, and then—” Jeanne Alter slides her blade against Kagetora’s katana, hooks the hilt around its guard, relinquishes her hold with one hand to drive a plated fist repeatedly into Kagetora’s side. “—you fucking show up and tell me I need to learn some control?!”

The god of war staggers, but doesn’t stumble. Kagetora doesn’t even flinch when Jeanne Alter presses close, seeking to ride the momentum of an advantage that might never have existed. Her next attacks are parried with increasing speed, and again Kagetora swings her spear around, this time knocking against the side of the Alter’s head with the pommel. The world spins, rings, twisting flames sounding all too much like anguished souls.

“I thought you could understand me!” she shrieks, high and thin over the sound of Shinjuku burning. “Maybe someone was the same as me, destroying things to try and silence some hunger, hating and enjoying it. That maybe you didn’t have anyone else because you’d burned all those bridges, because you’re not just satisfied with breaking things, you have to make sure you cut off everyone who tries to get close to you, too!”

Jeanne Alter props herself against a wall, sword held trembling in front of her, blood beginning to trickle down the side of her head. They’ve fought themselves into one of the empty clubs lining this lifeless street, the glow from outside illuminating dusty fixtures and a ceiling that threatens to give way at even a careless glance. Kagetora paces through the entrance, weapons ever ready, and eerily silent. If God was ever to employ an angel of vengeance, no doubt he’d ask Kagetora.

“I thought maybe someone could fucking get me for once,” Jeanne Alter gasps, now beginning to feel the effects of breathing in too much smoke. A place like this, so old and forgotten, throws up as much smoke as there are abandoned memories to be consumed in its destruction. “Maybe I could finally stop being so angry at this world if someone else was here like me. But it was just you, just fucking you—”

She lurches forward at Kagetora’s silhouette, white blurred grey from the ash on her clothes and what might be the occasional splatter of Jeanne Alter’s blood. Her foot strikes a loose panel, and the floor gives way: a distant rumble, and the floors above begin to yield, finally surrendering to years of neglect and the heat clawing away at the remaining structure. It comes down on her all at once, wood and metal and stone, twisted rebar like stakes plunging eagerly towards her blackened form.

Jeanne Alter wishes she could say she’d accept such an end willingly. She wishes she wasn’t such a coward that she closes her eyes, not wanting to watch the fire and metal come for her. Her hands lift instinctively to protect her face; in an act of rare mercy, something knocks her head back against the stone behind her, and the darkness of her eyelids melts into a softer kind, that of sleep.

She doesn’t see Kagetora leaping down after her, spear and katana vanishing in golden wisps, dropping next to the pile of rubble and clawing through it. When she wakes to the sensation of movement around her, she doesn’t think to ask whether it was Kagetora’s precious _ righteousness _ that spurred her to dig Jeanne Alter out, or something else unthinkable.

What Jeanne Alter does know is that she doesn’t dream, not yet. There’s no fire coiling up, preparing to strike, no restlessness for it to latch on to if it did. That blissful emptiness that Jeanne Alter has sought is upon her at last. Her anger is near, though, it always is— for now, it seems to have found its home in Kagetora. No; Kagetora doesn’t feel anger. So how…

And then it comes to her. Jeanne Alter’s hatred has always been tied to her fire, and she’s poured both out onto the streets of Shinjuku at the feet of an entity who feels none of that. There were no taunts to rile Jeanne Alter up further, no verbal jabs accompanying their exchange of blows to incense her further. What’s left in the darkness with Jeanne Alter is a comfortable nothingness, slowly rattled away with each shifting of the earth beneath her, until at least she opens her eyes: it’s bright; they’re passing beneath streetlamps and buzzing signs, Kagetora’s robes soft against her head as she carries Jeanne Alter with surprising care.

“Hey, Kenshit.” Jeanne Alter’s voice emerges a weakened croak, a hint of soot and ash falling from her lips as she speaks. Kagetora glances down at her, brow furrowed in some unreadable expression. “You fucking lied.”

“What are you saying?” Kagetora asks. “I understand that the expression ‘you hit your head’ can be meant as an insult, but this time, you really did hit your head.”

Jeanne Alter laughs, not at Kagetora’s attempt at humor, but from the realization that had dawned on her with the opening of her eyes. “You’ve been lying to yourself this whole time,” she says, wriggling to get a better look at Kagetora’s face. Kagetora’s arms tighten around her, almost uncomfortably so, not enough to deter Jeanne Alter from continuing: “I’m a fucking expert at it, so of course I’d be able to tell.”

“What are you saying now?”

“I’m saying you can hold back after all.” Jeanne Alter coughs more ash into her fist, digs the side of her head into Kagetora’s chest just to annoy her. “No matter what you’ve been telling yourself.”

“I don’t understand—”

“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Jeanne Alter feels Kagetora come to a stop in front of Shinjuku Station, as if waiting for some sign. In this moment of stillness, Kagetora might pass for a statue, her only signs of life the warmth that emanates from the skin covering taut and rigid muscles, and from the faint heartbeat Jeanne Alter feels against her cheek. “You kept hitting me with the back of your spear. If you wanted, I bet you could’ve killed me when we started.”

Kagetora doesn’t respond. Her expression doesn’t change, but her stride feels somehow different as she resumes her journey towards the rayshift point. Jeanne Alter feels a grin spread across her face, lets it stay in spite of the splitting pain coming from her head. “You drag your fights out because you like them, don’t you?” she says. “How’s that hold up to all those things you were taught? What’s righteous, what’s—” Jeanne Alter winces, works her jaw silently, as if that’ll dissipate the stabbing sensation coming from behind one eye. Her efforts only intensify the pain, which clouds at the edges of her vision, formless spots of black and white. Through them, she can just make out the wavering of Kagetora’s smile, the Lancer’s eyes now fixated on her, burning through her with stern intensity.

Kagetora’s smile trembles, struggles, surrenders. It drops from her face just as Jeanne Alter’s eyes force themselves shut, attempting to shield themselves from the haze of brightness above. A thought occurs to Jeanne Alter, how lost Kagetora had looked in that moment, how human. Of course, she doesn’t say that. What she does say is: “Guess that makes me the winner of this round, huh?”

Then the pounding in her head becomes an avalanche of darkness, cascading over her like the collapsing building had, carrying her off again into unconsciousness even as Kagetora steps forward to let the Rayshift pull them both home.

* * *

Jeanne Alter has never been able to put off a reckoning for long. Her fire finds her again, places them both in Shinjuku. That’s fine— Jeanne Alter knows both those things well, and wouldn’t care what other hell her dream brought upon her, if it weren’t for the intruder who refuses to leave her dream.

Kagetora is still here, and at her side this time. Uncharacteristic panic fills her eyes as she spins, robes flapping in the wild gusts churned up by the fire as if it’s breathing, alive and hunting them both. That’s bad enough in itself, but the worst part is something only Jeanne Alter would know, an obvious but hated truth. There’s only one source of fire this strong in Shinjuku, and it would be her; she’s trapped Kagetora along with her now, and they’re both about to burn.

Something knocks against her shoulder, too gentle to be fire. Jeanne Alter looks around, sees nothing. Again, harder, both shoulders; Jeanne Alter’s eyes fly open, and instinctively she curls in on herself, pushing Kagetora’s hands away, realizing only now that her armor’s been removed and the front of her shirt is drenched through with sweat. A few deep breaths calms her down, the scent of the air she takes in telling her she’s in her room. Kagetora’s brought her back home, and from the looks of things, tried to make her comfortable.

A frown tugs at Jeanne Alter’s lips, and she bares her teeth at Kagetora, as if that’ll drive her off. Her gut tells her that this is _ her _room, and Kagetora shouldn’t stay in it for a second longer than she has to; something softer whispers to her from closer to her heart, a thin line laced through with fear, telling her that Kagetora should leave before Jeanne Alter burns her, just like in the dream.

Kagetora’s lips are moving. “Are you alright?” she says, what would’ve been the sound of someone repeating those words over and over passing for what might be Kagetora’s normal tone.

“Fuck off,” Jeanne Alter snaps. She rolls onto her side, puts her back to Kagetora. Her imagined flames still shine vivid against her eyes whenever she blinks, and she wonders what she’d have seen had Kagetora not woken her up. Would Kagetora have burned at all? Would she have cracked, shown some emotion if she did? Jeanne Alter squeezes her eyes shut, grasps at her cold shoulders with barely warmer hands. The bed shifts with Kagetora’s retreat, and the air with it, a faint chilling that makes Jeanne Alter wish for Kagetora’s hands upon her again, if only for their heat, for the unfamiliar yet welcome sensation of another’s skin against hers.

“As you were the victor of our fight, I will respect your wish this time,” Kagetora says. “Good night, Jeanne Alter.”

She leaves quickly, a straight line through the door and out, leaving Jeanne Alter to wonder if that’s just how she operates, or if the seemingly emotionless god of war had somehow sensed the crumbling of Jeanne Alter’s already fractured bravado, and left before it could completely give way. Jeanne Alter pulls her knees tighter against her chest, shivering beneath the covers. No longer does her own fire warm her; she trembles in fear of it, and in the absence of it. It still hasn’t returned; it will, but this is the longest Jeanne Alter’s gone without it, and she wonders if that, too, is because of Kagetora. She hopes it’s not, that it’s this dream that’s chased it away, that it’ll be back to fill the emptiness in her chest before long. It’s her essence, after all, who and what she is. Jeanne Alter is a creature made of conflated hate and a death by fire, but none of it is here for her now. She fears it, like she’d trembled at the idea of Kagetora lingering in her room. Yes, Kagetora is like her, but nowhere near as similar as Jeanne Alter had thought. Inhuman or not, god or not, Jeanne Alter’s fires will still burn her, because she’s still a product of this world, even if— no, God can’t damn her twice, now finish the thought— Jeanne Alter wishes it wasn’t so.

A new resolve forms in Jeanne Alter’s chest, settling amidst the smoldering embers of her hatred, a fresh and pulsating coal. This is the last she’ll have to do with Nagao Kagetora. She won’t let herself think of things like companionship, not when they’re different enough that the fury of Jeanne Alter’s fire might still scorch her. She shouldn’t care, but she does; she fears Kagetora’s closeness, that Kagetora might still strive to understand her, that her flame will one day lash out and burn away even this twisted semblance of companionship they’ve formed.

Jeanne Alter settles an unsteady hand over her heart, feels the faintest hint of warmth gathering there against her skin. Her resolution burns within her, the only heat to be found within her tonight, and Jeanne Alter lets it simmer into an open flame, as equally hated as the rest of herself, and yet her only solace as the long night turns towards the dawning of the sun upon a world that, for the first time, she doesn’t seek to burn in its entirety.

* * *

Kagetora walks along the edge of the sidewalk, the hem of her sleeve just draping along the railing marking place where concrete drops away into asphalt. A light frost has begun gathering in Shinjuku, on the high spires of its skyscrapers and the flat tops of the multitude of flashing signs. Crowds of people push by Kagetora, businessmen and friends knotted in tight packs, rushing to Shinjuku Station to catch the last train home or wading deeper out into the city with the stalwart resignation needed to spend the few dark hours ‘til morning waiting it out in some hotel or cafe.

All this, Kagetora walks by without seeing. The humans have blurred together into a single faceless entity, no longer of interest to her. Their strange strugglings, once of such vital interest, no longer provide anything of that sort for Kagetora. She’s among them for one reason only; she’s looking for someone, a certain Avenger who she hasn’t seen for several nights. The Rayshift logs say that she comes and goes, but they haven’t crossed paths since that night they fought, and the last few nights have rained out whatever plumes of smoke Kagetora might’ve looked to follow.

Kagetora doesn’t know why she’s looking for Jeanne Alter, not specifically. If she had to describe it, it would be in terms of an instinctual urge, like a fish swimming back to its spawning place, a journey unfamiliar and with no end in sight until it’s there. That’s how Kagetora feels now, with the last words Jeanne Alter had spoken to her in Shinjuku echoing in her head, like she’s been thrown into unknown waters with no escape but to find her and demand an explanation.

(She doesn’t need those words explained any further. They weren’t hard to understand; Kagetora just doesn’t want to believe that she could. She fights to uphold the Buddha’s virtues and to punish wrongdoing. The rush of combat, no matter how satisfying, could never be more important than that. But it is; even in a life filled with constant warfare, Kagetora had always wished for more, because it’s when she’d felt closest to her men. Fighting on a field where anyone, even a god, was bound by the law of life and death, was where she’d found herself most at peace).

That heady thrill from fighting Jeanne Alter wasn’t the only thing she’d wanted more of. The weight of the Alter still lingers in her arms and against her armor, an added pressure on her breastplate, unexpectedly comforting in its own right. This is the selfish contradiction that Kagetora is left to navigate: the balance of what is and what she wishes to be, the constant conflict that’s plagued the person known as Nagao Kagetora since her birth. For once, she’s been seen through, maybe even understood, but with that comes an unease so great that even Kagetora can’t deny its presence. If a god becomes understood, is he then truly a god? If the one who understands god is equally inhuman, what then?

(Had she ever truly been a god, or had she simply taken the name of one to prove her family wrong, to convince both herself and the world she was not a monster?)

Kagetora fidgets, tugs at the edges of her robes. She moves over to the side of the street to let people pass, and watches them go by her. Some, mostly briefcase-clutching salarymen, hurry by alone, but for every one of them is a group walking slowly, laughing or talking animatedly. This is the luxury known to humans as closeness, and Kagetora wonders— had all these people experienced this same feeling; had each friendship forged required such an exchange of vulnerabilities?

(Could this disquiet in her heart be the underpinnings of something that might be called human?)

Now Kagetora knows what the men who served under her must have felt. In the face of something they can’t understand, what other response is there but nervous laughter and the unvoiced wish to move on and never speak of the matter again? But, god of war or not, Kagetora does not shy from anything. It’s here, just within reach: a grasp on herself, and also on Jeanne Alter, if she can only push a little further.

(Try to understand them, her sister had said, but Kagetora never could. Then again, Jeanne Alter had said she wasn’t human.)

Kagetora lets her mind wander, back to emptier and darker streets, words shouted over a chorus of rustling flames, murmured in unstated surrender against her chest. Jeanne Alter had seen through her in a way no one else did—

—because she, Kagetora realizes, is in some ways the same as herself. Kagetora’s world is composed of scenes of fighting; Jeanne Alter burns through hers indiscriminately, living the only way she knows how, guided by a thirst for vengeance as natural to her as the Buddha’s tenets are to Kagetora. Her rage stems not just from Gilles’ wish, but from the knowledge that save for her own strength of will, not even the world would’ve given her a chance. Revenge is what Jeanne Alter knows, woven into the core of her being as much as Kagetora’s strength is a part of hers, her sole delight in an otherwise inhospitable world.

(It’s not what her sister would have wanted, but it’ll have to be close enough. It’s too late for Kagetora to be anything but the god of war she declared herself to be, but it might not be too late for the Alter, who at least can still feel, still connect with others.)

The way forward is slowly becoming clear, as if a fog has lifted from Kagetora’s eyes. If what Jeanne Alter needs is something to bear her anger, then Kagetora will be it. (She’d be lying if she didn’t admit that fighting Jeanne Alter carries an excitement all its own, and the fresh sensation of the Alter’s anger washing over her like waves on a shore, herself a stone too heavy to be moved, but free to bask in the current raging around her. It isn’t quite _ feeling_, but it’s enough; it’s more than she could ever experience by herself, the intense fury that drives others away like a refreshing breeze to Kagetora.

That’s what she’s been looking for, Kagetora admits to herself— the curious turnings in her stomach when she’s near Jeanne Alter that might be the nascent beginnings of emotions. The implicit companionship that would follow is just that, an inherent consequence, or so Kagetora would think if that wouldn’t just be proving Jeanne Alter’s point. Kagetora’s smile rekindles on her face, growing broader, a hint of laughter slipping out and quickly lost in the swirl of noise around her. But with it, something that catches Kagetora’s eyes: a distant wisp of grey curling up into a navy black sky, the sight of it kindling a tenuous warmth in her chest, a new and swaying excitement faintly reminiscent of the flame of a certain Alter.

* * *

Kagetora comes across Jeanne Alter at the far edge of Shinjuku, surrounded by twisted, upended metal whose shadows streak like some massive tangle of skeletal remains between the abandoned train tracks. This yard was once part of the vital organs of the massive beast named Tokyo. Rendered obsolete, now it wastes away with only restless wandering spirits for company, waiting to be repurposed the way all things humans find useful are. Perhaps it says something that Jeanne Alter’s chosen to give away her presence here of all places.

The Alter isn’t the only one who’s come here, though now she’s certainly the only one still standing. Pieces of automatons and bright yellow armor litter the ground, their paint chipped and cracked and curling in on itself, a trail leading to the base of a charred box car. Jeanne Alter sits atop it, legs dangling loosely over the side, heels banging against the hollow metal. Fresh marks of angry red trailing up her legs and lower arms, erratic and jumpy like fire. Her bangs stick lightly to her forehead, barely lifting with the breeze, and her head snaps up at the sound Kagetora’s sandals on the scorched gravel, twitching fingers jerking towards the sword laid across her lap.

For a second, their eyes meet, and there’s a wildness to Jeanne Alter’s eyes, more akin to muted terror than anything resembling fire. She knows this expression: she’d seen it in those brief seconds after she’d shaken Jeanne Alter into waking, a fear unlike any she’d encountered before.

“Oh,” Jeanne Alter says, surveying Kagetora with a scowl. “It’s just you. The hell do you want now?”

“You were right,” Kagetora says. Jeanne Alter snorts, looks away, and a metal barrel ignites against the wall of a shed a few yards away.

“Yeah? That’s nice. Now fuck off and leave me alone.”

“I don’t think so.” Kagetora glances at the box car, studies the rusted ladder clinging to its side by a few bolts hanging on with no more than the worn ends of their screw threads holding them in place. Jeanne Alter snarls, and with a swing of her hand, a line of fire goes up between the ladder and Kagetora. She looks back up at Jeanne Alter, undeterred. “You see, if you’re right, then that means you’re also wrong.”

“What?” Jeanne Alter laughs, tapping the roof of the car with her fist. “What kind of a sentence is that?”

“What I mean is, you’re right about everything you said about me last night, but that means you’re wrong about yourself.” Kagetora saunters to the base of the box car, gazing up at the Servant sitting above her. “It means you’re human too, no matter what you try and convince yourself.”

There’s a metallic clattering: Jeanne Alter’s taken a wild swing at Kagetora and missed, cleaving a gash in the train car. “What the fuck are you going on about now?” she demands. For a moment, she sways on the edge, as if tempted to leap down from her perch and tell Kagetora exactly what she thinks with the bite of her sword. “Did you really ignore everything I told you about myself? I’m something Gilles thought up! A creation of the Holy Grail! Where does ‘human’ fit into that, huh?”

“But you wish otherwise.” Kagetora taps the flat of Jeanne Alter’s sword with a finger, moving the point back and forth. “If you didn’t, you’d simply be content with the way things are now. So it’s simple: if you’re right about me, then the possibility exists that you can become something more than simply what was wished for from the Grail. If you’re wrong, then I’m like you: a mistaken creation of man attempting to be a god.”

Jeanne Alter’s mouth works silently, her rage once again stripped away, and with it the night becomes so very cold. Kagetora pays this no mind, only presses a finger to Jeanne Alter’s blade, lets it sink against her until it nearly pierces her skin. Only then does she remove herself from its bite, rubbing her thumb over the indent in her flesh, occupied for a moment by the distant past. If Jeanne Alter is wrong, as she’s likely to declare out of spite, then it would mean there’s truly nothing else for Kagetora beyond the life ascribed to her, and that her family and retainers had been right in proclaiming her to be a monster.

“Why does it matter to you so much what I think?” Jeanne Alter growls, finally surrendering her post and dropping down in front of Kagetora. The edge of her sword veers threateningly towards her neck, not close enough to truly warrant a reaction, but close nonetheless. “Aren’t you supposed to be above all that?”

“Even gods aren’t immune to the influence of belief,” Kagetora says, her smile once again settling into an unreadable curve. “And, perhaps, because I value your opinion above any other’s. Like I said before, you and I are alike.”

“And that makes you want to stick around me?” Jeanne Alter steps closer, brandishing her sword with a twist. “Usually when people get compared to me, they take offense to it and try to avoid me as much as possible.”

“I enjoy your company,” Kagetora replies simply. “I find it—” Here she pauses, searching, uncertain and fleetingly vulnerable. “Different,” she finally declares. “When I’m near you, I…” Another verbal stumbling, though shorter. “I can almost feel things.”

“Almost, huh? Pathetic.” Jeanne Alter should smile here, but she doesn’t, nor does she say anything else. She turns her head to look out over Shinjuku, vibrant and swollen with light, letting its glow mask her hesitation. “You know what you’re saying means, right? It means you have to try and be more than what those stupid humans of your time thought you were, too.”

“That’s not possible—”

“And why not?” Jeanne Alter’s voice lifts in volume, a hint of her usual self pushing through. “You said it, a god can change if the belief is there, right? Then I’ll do you a fucking favor and try this stupid believing thing out, if that’ll give you a chance to become something else.”

“It won’t work.” Now Kagetora is laughing, soft and smooth and ringing with a sound foreign to her in life: defeat. “When I said you were right about what you’d said, I meant all of it. I didn’t take Bishamonten’s name because I wasn’t sure about what weapon to bring with me.” Kagetora breaks their stalemated stares, gazing past Jeanne Alter at the still-burning barrel. “I took it because I couldn’t stand what the others were saying about me any longer. No matter what I did, I couldn’t understand them, and they couldn’t see me as anything other than a monster, something unable to grasp the human heart. I claimed to be the avatar of the god of war because I couldn’t bear being seen as anything else any longer. Then they believed it, and so here I am.”

“Great history lesson.” Jeanne Alter tosses her head, throwing her hair to the side. “I don’t give a fuck. That’s in the past now. If you’re going to come here spouting all this shit at me and asking me to try out this whole being human crap, then I’m telling you to forget all that and put in some effort yourself. And if you even think of chickening out and not trying and making me deal with all this shit myself, then I’m coming for you.” Jeanne Alter moves closer again, until the tips of her boots are just pressed up against Kagetora’s sandals. Her eyes gleam with a light that shouldn’t reach the space between them, an unearthly intensity in their gold. “If that happens, then you’ll be the thing I hate the most. I’ll hunt you down and burn you until there’s not even ashes left if you dare give me any false fucking hope.”

“That’s fine.” Kagetora’s expression shifts, the minutest of changes, but for once her smile isn’t as broad or stiff. It reaches up to the edges of her eyes, slips into the short laugh that escapes her. “But I think I wouldn’t mind if you decided to hate me anyway.”

Jeanne Alter recoils, one eye twitching in barely masked confusion. “Don’t tell me you’re some kind of closet masochist too, Kenshit.”

“Nothing like that,” Kagetora giggles. “You’re not the kind of person who holds anything back, even when it comes to feeling. It’s like— if your emotions were your fire, then what I feel is the heat.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” Jeanne Alter snaps, though by this point it feels more instinctual than genuine. “Get your own fucking fire.”

“Now who’s the one who hasn’t been listening?” Kagetora sounds entirely serious, but a brief twinkle shines in her eye, there and gone like a wayward spark come on its last legs from the barrel, now beginning to peter out and smoulder. “It’s not that simple. Understanding huma— people and their emotions has always been beyond me.”

“You seem to get me just fine, or at least how to piss me off.”

“And like I said, you’re different.”

The frequent twitchings of Kagetora’s smile settle, at last, into a form that Jeanne Alter can’t recognize at first. This isn’t the rote, still-life expression she paints on in each of her waking moments; another moment, and Jeanne Alter realizes it’s satisfaction, drawn wide across Kagetora’s face. That new burning in her stirs, flares, consumes her from her chest down to her toes with a singular wave of anguish. She can’t be near Kagetora. She’d end up burning Kagetora one day, or Kagetora would grow tired of her and leave as gods so often do with their playthings, and at the core of her desperation, the same thing as ever: her innate drive to cut off anyone who gets too close.

So she’ll do it all at once. She’ll give Kagetora a taste of her fire; she’ll sear it into Kagetora’s soul, show her what it means to be close to an Avenger with a power born from a single-minded and hateful wish. Jeanne Alter’s hand sinks into the cloth of Kagetora’s robe, finding tremulous purchase, and yanks her down. Kagetora’s breath ghosts over her mouth, so close, and there’s just enough time for Jeanne Alter to squeeze her eyes shut and pray, to who she doesn’t know except that it’s _a_ _god_, to deliver her from her endless and futile dreams.

Jeanne Alter knows nothing of kissing other than what her original’s memories have showed her. She knows of the cool metal of a crucifix and wooden beads wrapped around her palms. She knows that whatever prayers her original whispered in rooms made hallowed by her presence would never have been as crude as the one sent heavenward just one breath before, or the one that takes her breath now; the surprising softness of Kagetora’s lips and a foreign sense of heat not her own. Her fingers slacken, but still shake, so used to grasping a sword that anything else feels not only uncomfortable, but wrong.

The one thing that stays certain is how still the pressure is against her mouth. Kagetora doesn’t move, might not even blink. Like a statue of a Buddha- that’s the first thing Jeanne Alter’s mind goes to, if Buddhas were carved of uncertainty rather than stone.

She doesn’t move even when Jeanne Alter retreats, eyes wide and quivering, heart racing with fear for once not born from hellfire. What Jeanne Alter had thought was wrong; it was never burning Kagetora she’d been more afraid of, but the thought of her leaving after all, but now it would seem that Jeanne Alter has gone and solved that for both of them.

A hand slides around Jeanne Alter’s, and something pushes against her lips with a tender lightness. For once, Kagetora’s eyes are shut, and her smile has retreated into the unseen movement of their kiss, which teeters on the border of accommodating and wanting, nowhere near needy, but still enough that Jeanne Alter doesn’t immediately pull back and tell Kagetora that she’s making a mistake.

Four gloved fingers and one bare thumb glide over Jeanne Alter’s cheek, stop along the curve of her chin and the slight gap between her lips through which she scarcely dares to breathe. The fire Jeanne Alter had started in the barrel puffs its last, though its smoke doesn’t drift anywhere near. Something else, almost tangible enough to touch, fills the air between them: a tension that even Kagetora can’t break. She whispers into it instead: “Is that how you intend to burn me?”

For once, neither Jeanne Alter nor her fire know what do in response. Kagetora steps back, sliding easily out of Jeanne Alter’s grip, and adjusts the front of her robes. “If we are to do this, then I’ll likewise expect a full effort from you. Anything less, and I will be the punishment from god you so often speak of.”

Another smile, a whispering of long fabric in the wind, and Kagetora is vanishing towards the edge of the railyard, a slender white ghost flitting between upturned iron posts. Jeanne Alter doesn’t know whether to watch her go or not; she’s left to stare blankly in the space Kagetora had once occupied, Shinjuku whirling in a frenzy of light and sound around her, an ever-shifting city that now mirrors the chaos in Jeanne Alter’s soul.

The one and only thing she knows for certain: there will be no fire waiting for her in her dreams tonight.

* * *

Neither of them had envisioned what returning to Chaldea would be like. Idealism is something new to them both; Jeanne Alter hadn’t been expecting a miracle or anything of the sort, but the longer she spends in Chaldea’s halls, the more she’s certain that someone (probably herself) had made a grave misjudgement somewhere down the line. She’d been caught up in the moment and Kagetora, and committed herself to an impossible task. How stupid of her, to forget that Shinjuku was her refuge specifically because no other Servants walked its streets, that she felt her most human there not because of any doing of Kagetora’s, but because of her other self’s memories.

Returning to Chaldea is in itself like waking from a dream, a sharp and sudden return to reality: she’d cut ties with most of these other Servants, and they pass by Jeanne Alter with averted gazes, if they decide to pass her at all. This, like all her other dreams, she keeps hidden, even from Kagetora. Nothing good would come of it, she tells herself; she’d only destroy the tenuous progress Kagetora has made, the fleeting hints of a true smile beginning to emerge from beneath that carefully curated shell she’s lived in for so long. She sees it in their brief meetings: when they sit together for meals, when they encounter each other in the halls, timid flutterings of what she hopes are emotions, slowly finding their way out into the world like fragile, wet-winged butterflies.

She hopes this, because Jeanne Alter knows the truth Kagetora had let her forget that night: that it isn’t what she wants that matters, but a wish made in anger in a long-resolved Singularity. The limits of her being are etched into her in immutable fire, and with each day that passes she feels the furnace of her rage growing hotter, approaching a breaking point even Jeanne Alter isn’t aware of. She’s never bothered to contain herself, but she does now, if only for that slightest chance that Kagetora is succeeding where she herself isn’t. This will be her one act of good, something to martyr herself on her own pyre with, waiting as long as she can to admit that she’s failing. If, at least, Kagetora can find someone else to befriend, and prove herself not truly beyond reach—

If that could happen, then whatever divine retribution she’d face could at least be worth something.

On her worst nights, the Shinjuku she pines for appears in her dreams, covered in brilliant blazes that blanket the sky with smoke and sing to her with ashen tongues; this is where she belongs, they say, and not Chaldea, for the Quarantined City that lives in her mind never ceased to be filled with the outcast monsters sealed away by the rest of the world, herself among them.

And nearly a month after when she and Kagetora had talked under an equally starless sky, Jeanne Alter can’t take it anymore. The Rayshift parameters for Shinjuku still come to her fingertips as instinctively and naturally as fire; she’s gone before anyone might suspect, and wonders if anyone— Kagetora— would.

Jeanne Alter would be lying if she said she didn’t want to be found. She does; she wants Kagetora here with her to take the ardent fervor of her fire away; she wants it with the same selfishness she’s had, just pretended she could ignore until it peaked and boiled over, impossible to contain.

What she hopes, though, is that Kagetora doesn’t return to Shinjuku. A god doesn’t abandon their faithful, after all. Jeanne Alter touches down at Shinjuku Station, pulls her jacket tight around herself, flings herself into the crowds and lets herself be carried in their flow. She has no destination tonight, simply _ away_. A single-minded determination bears her along, deeper into the heart of Shinjuku, and with it a single thought that she repeats in time with the clenching of her fingers, a fervent and unceasing prayer. Don’t let Kagetora pursue her; keep Kagetora away from Shinjuku tonight, if only to prove that her faith in herself hadn’t been misplaced, that at least one of them might still be human.

* * *

Shinjuku’s sky is spread thick with the promise of rain, hefty grey clouds that break into wandering packs over the city like bits of flaky, brittle charcoal. This wouldn’t be a city one’s likely to find Jeanne Alter in, but where else would she be? She’s fled Chaldea; there’s nowhere else for her to go. She’ll be somewhere on the rooftops or slinking through alleyways shielded from the coming downpour by the layers of signs choking the air above them, waiting for the storm.

Kagetora walks with evident care along the side streets, watchful eyes surveying the low canopy of clouds. Jeanne Alter wouldn’t be caught up willingly in whatever offering the heavens are about to unleash, but desperation will drag even the most unexpected of behaviors out from anyone, human or not. For a moment, she thinks of the nickname coined by the blackened King of Knights, and she imagines a soaked Jeanne Alter rayshifting back to Chaldea to shake herself dry, every part the disgruntled dog.

That image shouldn’t make Kagetora want to laugh. If she were human, the proper response might be something like pity. Kagetora isn’t completely sure, and that’s it, she’ll never be sure. This uncertainty is as much a part of her as her strength, and now she realizes, just as openly on display for everyone to see. The other Servants may tolerate her presence, but will never truly welcome it; they indulge her feeble attempts at emotion, and nothing more.

A flickering up on one of the rooftops catches Kagetora’s eye, a timid twisting of tepid orange and turbid grey. In the streets, a second smaller light mimics the first; Kagetora ignores that one, thinking it at first another barrel, and rethinking that as the sidewalks she walks along lose more and more ground to the charred remains of metal dolls laying haphazardly where they melted.

Kagetora arrives to find Jeanne Alter with a flame in her left hand and the neck of a bottle clenched in her trembling right. Tens of interconnected alleyways spiral out from the foot of this building in a labyrinth, and from this vantage point Kagetora sees the wandering lights of mechanical dolls drifting along those many paths, one by one collapsing as the heat from the fires takes its toll on their joints.

“Hey, Kenshit.” Jeanne Alter’s head lists from side to side at the sound of Kagetora’s footsteps, the bottle wavering unsteadily as she takes two long sips. The last of the liquor runs down the side of her cheek, and that bottle is quickly tossed aside into a growing pile while Jeanne Alter reaches for one of the eight that remain. “‘M playing a game. Come join me.”

“What sort of game?” Kagetora settles herself at Jeanne Alter’s side and finds a bottle being pushed into her hand, insistent fingers wrapping over hers and lingering for so long that Kagetora loses count of how many heartbeats it would be.

“Drinking game,” Jeanne Alter says. “It’s easy. I…” A wave of her left hand, followed by a dramatic arcing of her right; a quarter of a bottle spills into her mouth and over her chin. A new beacon glides along the lightless streets, freshly ignited. “One if I hit, two if I miss,” Jeanne Alter drawls, looking expectantly at Kagetora. “And the whole thing if I get a building.”

Briefly, Kagetora thinks to say that Jeanne Alter shouldn’t be engaging her in a drinking contest. The only thing she’d loved in life as much as fighting was to drink so much so that she’d always kept a bowl on hand. Jeanne Alter dips her head, though her eyes don’t move from Kagetora’s face. The turbulent sky reflects off her already clouded eyes, and Kagetora feels herself pause. She understands that look; she knows that look. That had been her, hundreds of years ago in Echigo, looking for approval in the gazes of the men who were supposed to be her father and brother, and the first to give voice to their doubts that Kagetora was human.

“Have you set a building on fire yet?” Kagetora takes a drink, and her tongue is met with a familiar bitter taste, quickly smoothed over by sweeter notes: Jeanne Alter’s gone and gotten the plum-flavored sake. The Alter shakes her head, hunches down between the high peaks of her shoulders. That she doesn’t protest any further speaks to the inevitability of it happening: whether it’ll be drunkenness or the increasing unsteadiness of Jeanne Alter’s hand will have to be seen. “So what’s brought this on?” she asks, and watches the lost look on Jeanne Alter’s face darken into a familiar scowl.

“Oh, nothing.” Jeanne Alter throws back her head, a high and breathy sound balanced precariously between laughter and a groan escaping her throat. “Just the usual. Failed wish on the Grail, fucked things up for myself way before this, never even stood a chance.” Jeanne Alter sways from side to side, gesturing with her bottle into the air over the side of the building. “Even if I wasn’t like this, I’d still be… like this.”

“Like…?”

Jeanne Alter shrugs and flings a bolt of hazy red into the night, watching it splash off and catch on the body of another roaming automaton. “All of Gilles’ bitterness, even if I get rid of that? Everything I feel’s still here. Or— or maybe it’s backwards. It made more sense an hour ago. Fuck, why are you even asking me? Just go back to fucking Chaldea and find yourself someone to talk to who isn’t a useless failure.” A roll of formless flame finds a shape, licking eagerly up the side of a structure on the horizon, and Jeanne Alter winces and tugs her bottle closer again. “Fuck.”

Jeanne Alter moves to drink again, finds her right hand unresponsive. Kagetora’s taken hold of it, her grip solid as she moves closer, bangs dangling in front of her eyes with the slight incline of her head. “You aren’t the only one who’s failed here, Alter,” she admits. “I haven’t progressed much on my front, either.”

“Fuck that,” Jeanne Alter snaps. “I’ve seen you with the others. You’re doing fucking fine—”

“Am I?” Kagetora asks her. “You don’t truly think your counterparts can’t tell a false smile from a real one. They react in the ways they know how, because they don’t know what else to do. We can talk and laugh together, but I have no ground in common with them, nor am I any closer to understanding what they feel.” Kagetora pulls a long swig from her own bottle, wiping the the back of her glove across her face.

“Great, so we’re both freaks of nature after all, good to know.” Jeanne Alter tries to yank her hand free, finds Kagetora still won’t relinquish it. “What?”

“Is there something so wrong with that?” Kagetora’s smile is oddly patient for the words she speaks. Jeanne Alter would’ve expected, if not anger, then the unstated surrender that she knows gods are so partial of.

“Yeah, because it means you were right after all! About this whole enjoying the chaos I cause thing, us being alike.” Jeanne Alter slams her free hand down on the roof, ignoring the gravel that digs into her palm, sticking into her skin. She might not be responsible for Kagetora’s stifled attempts at creating companionship, but she is still Jeanne Alter, wielder of the fire that had killed her original, born to destroy. “Which means I can’t change what I’ll do, what’ll happen. You stick around any longer, and you’ll get fucking burned, too, so go the hell back to Chaldea already!”

“Did you forget what I said when we made this agreement?” Jeanne Alter bristles under Kagetora’s stare, which she’s finally found a word to describe. _ Kindly_, that’s what it is, what guides Kagetora alongside the Buddha’s virtues and whatever the hell else dictates the actions of a god intent on helping humanity. “I said I enjoyed your presence. That hasn’t changed, regardless of our circumstances.”

“Well, it should!” Jeanne Alter’s fingers drag in towards her palms, raw and sensitive skin protesting the bite of small pebbles against one hand and nails against the other. “You were right about what we’re like, so shouldn’t you know that sticking around me’s only gonna end badly?”

“I wouldn’t.” Kagetora finally takes her eyes off Jeanne Alter and lifts them to the assembled clouds. “Even if I knew everything there is to you, I couldn’t say for certain, nor could you.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You’ve never had anyone stay by your side for long.” Kagetora’s lips part briefly, the ghost of a laugh. “I never bothered with such things in my lifetime, either. No one could understand me, nor I them. The same could be said of you, couldn’t it? You know nothing of how closeness would feel, since your original kept no such bonds. You know nothing of what it means to have a partner, and so you fear it and avoid it.”

“Don’t fucking get all preachy on me, Kenshit!” Jeanne Alter lunges for Kagetora with her other hand. It too fails to reach its destination, Kagetora’s palm warm against her numbing fingers, the careful brushing of their hands dislodging those rocks that hadn’t yet fallen free of Jeanne Alter’s skin, with them going whatever else Jeanne Alter might’ve wanted to say.

“You fear and avoid it because you don’t understand it,” Kagetora says, her voice no louder than a murmur. Her eyes find Jeanne Alter’s face again, wide and for once devoid of any hint of a smile, feigned or not. “As my men and my family did me. Is the prospect of finding someone like yourself so terrifying to you that you would push it away without knowing what might follow?”

“Who fucking says those rules apply to us?” protests Jeanne Alter. She hears the tremor in her voice, the lack of conviction, and just barely keeps herself from wincing. “We’re not like those others. We’re not fucking human.”

“That doesn’t negate the fact that you and I both feel.” Kagetora’s hands slip away from Jeanne Alter’s at last, and with them goes what little warmth she’d had that didn’t come from her fire. The difference becomes clear right away, but Jeanne Alter doesn’t let her shiver reach anywhere Kagetora can see. “And when I am near you, I feel things in a way I could never have before. Don’t you feel anything different?”

Jeanne Alter doesn’t answer right away, bringing her bottle up and grinding her teeth into the rim as she drinks its contents down. Kagetora joins her, seemingly content not to press for an answer, waiting for it to come to her. Her eyes pass over the skyline, a reddened glow rising from the building Jeanne Alter had set on fire to match the flush taking hold on the Alter’s cheeks. Still Kagetora doesn’t say anything, not even when she’s finished her bottle, content to wait in this space between bustling Shinjuku and the motionless air awaiting the passage of rain.

“It’s not as bad when I’m around you,” Jeanne Alter says at last. Kagetora keeps her gaze straight ahead, politely vacant at first glance, but the slight crease of her brow tells Jeanne Alter that she’s listening, waiting. “I don’t fucking know why. It shouldn’t be, but it just is.”

“Then perhaps we can settle for this.” Kagetora waves a hand between them both, the slight curl of her fingers tilted towards Shinjuku. “Whether I’m truly a god or not, I know I’m not entirely human, and maybe we don’t have to be. Just as long as we’re human enough for each other.” Her head turns toward Jeanne Alter, and something catches in the Alter’s throat: not smoke, for once, but her own breath. She swallows past it, hard, the world spinning around her. Kagetora’s shoulder rises in her vision; she knocks against it with a muffled thump, empty bottle slipping from her limp fingers as she grasps vainly at Kagetora’s robes.

“Fuckin’ fine,” Jeanne Alter grumbles, as if her agreement will get the blurring yellows and reds to stop fighting in front of her eyes and let her fire drain from her cheeks. “On one condition.”

Kagetora blinks, as if taken aback, and glances down at the Alter against her side. The wide darkness of her pupils forms a second starfield against the clouds, and Jeanne Alter almost wants to laugh: Kagetora looks so lost, so comical, that in this moment it’s hard to believe this is the person who lays claim to the title of god of war. Jeanne Alter lets gurgling laughter drip from her lips, and with a tug on Kagetora’s sleeve, voices her one demand: “You gotta fuckin’ carry me. I can’t feel my fucking legs.”

* * *

The only warmth Jeanne Alter knows is that of fire: how to angle herself in relation to the wind to avoid the smoke but still feel its heat; how it feels rippling over her skin, whether pleasant or painful; the feverish sweat it raises on her body as she stands at its core.

Kagetora’s is an unknown factor, but a welcome one. She’s draped a long white wrap over Jeanne Alter to keep her warm on the journey back. Even now that they’re in Chaldea, the Alter still clings to it, having tugged it over her face as much to mask herself from the eyes of any Servants they might encounter as for the miniscule comfort she finds in it. Maybe it’s the sake on her breath deceiving her, but Jeanne Alter swears she can smell something in the fabric— perhaps something like pine needles.

And then there are Kagetora’s arms against her, one tucked under her knees and the other tight around her shoulders, much like she’d been carried back the night they’d fought. Jeanne Alter finds herself pressing her body against them, not out of spite but of an inexplicable ache for _ more_, and when they’ve passed through the sliding door and into Jeanne Alter’s room, her hands find the seam of Kagetora’s robes, pulling gently.

Jeanne Alter doesn’t ask for anything; it’s a matter of her pride, and she won’t bend it even for Kagetora. What she speaks into the silence of her room is not a request, but a command, a single word: “Stay.”

Kagetora does, but of course in the way someone who’d claimed to be the avatar of Bishamonten would. She lays Jeanne Alter against the bed and remains standing at its side, stiffly out of place, until Jeanne Alter reaches and pulls her down with a roll of her eyes. Kagetora bounces once off the mattress and the sheets, and Jeanne Alter is against her even before she’s settled, forehead nestling against Kagetora’s chest and legs tangled in the train of her robe.

She expects Kagetora will question her. After all, Jeanne Alter is known for the devastation she causes, not any semblance of tenderness. A long few seconds go by, what must be a minute. Then, Kagetora’s response: a softening of her eyes, her arms fitting snugly around Jeanne Alter’s shoulders, the resting of her chin against the Alter's collarbone.

(Kagetora, too, has been lonely. The avatar of Bishamonten wants for little, but not nothing. Tonight, she chases with her usual single-mindedness the same thing Jeanne Alter also wants, the touch of another against her skin that she’s been denied for a lifetime and more.)

Jeanne Alter pulls Kagetora closer, disappearing into her robes until the crown of her head is only barely visible, white fabric and silver hair melding in the dimness of the room. Kagetora feels the heave of her chest, the puff of breath against the thin layers of clothing separating them. Her words emerge muffled but still clear: “I used too much of my fire tonight.”

“You’ll regain the mana if you rest.” Kagetora’s response feels scripted, but in a way unlike the usual, as if she’s trying to avoid saying anything that might change Jeanne Alter’s mind.

“I know!” Another oddity: the Alter sounds not frustrated, but far too soft, almost afraid. “That’s not— I don’t want to be alone tonight, okay?”

Golden eyes peer up at Kagetora and duck away just as quickly. Kagetora’s hand slides up Jeanne Alter’s back, along the curve of her spine and the slight bump of scar tissue at the back of her neck, usually hidden by her hair. She’s waiting, Kagetora realizes, and so she says, “Why not?”

“I dream of hellfire when I use my powers too much.” Jeanne Alter twists her neck to the side, slides her head under Kagetora’s fingers, sighs softly as they spread into her hair.

“Your fire?” asks Kagetora. Jeanne Alter nods, and so Kagetora ventures another question: “Are you the one that it burns?”

An unexpected silence follows. Kagetora hadn’t really thought Jeanne Alter would answer, but hadn’t thought of what she might say if she didn’t. She notices, but says nothing of the irregularity in Jeanne Alter’s breathing, the tightening of shaking fingers at the seams of her robes.

The silence lapses into nothingness, the aimless wandering of Kagetora’s eyes across the ceiling and the evening out of Jeanne Alter’s breathing. Kagetora thinks she’s gone to sleep; she startles when Jeanne Alter finally speaks again, a timid whisper passing quickly under her breath, a confession spoken and done. “You’re there too, sometimes.”

Kagetora’s fingers stop where they had been rubbing idle circles into Jeanne Alter’s scalp. Everything else seems to stop along with them. Jeanne Alter keeps her eyes shut tight, like her original had when she was being taught to pray. One shouldn’t allow distractions to come between oneself and God, and Jeanne Alter knows once she looks, she won’t be able to stop searching for the condemnation in Kagetora’s eyes.

But all Kagetora does is slide her fingers down the Alter’s cheek and ask, “What happens?”

“Sometimes you kill me,” Jeanne Alter mutters. What she doesn’t say is that for every dream where Kagetora comes for her with her spear are ten more in which her original is the one chasing her down, excoriating her from the face of the earth with her holy sword. No matter if the flames are pure— all fire is hellfire if it’s killing you. “But mostly, you’re there with me, and I can’t do anything about it. No matter what I say, no matter if I get you to leave, neither of us make it far.”

“Those are just dreams—”

“But that doesn’t mean they don’t mean anything!” There’s a rawness to Jeanne Alter’s voice, cracking as if it’s glass exposed to intense flame. Her right hand won’t stop shaking; she wishes it were around her sword right now, if only so her pain will be a familiar one, and not that which comes with the vulnerability of explaining herself to Kagetora. “If you stay with me, I’ll end up burning you,” she chokes out, sounding as if she’s gagging on unshed tears. “But I don’t want you to leave, either.”

In response, Kagetora’s fingers dip beneath her chin and tilt it upwards. Jeanne Alter’s breath scorches the inside of her mouth; she inhales it, presses the Alter harder against herself, kisses her as if to draw in everything Jeanne Alter has to offer until it sparks some unknown feeling within her, or else to surrender this lack of feeling, and hope Jeanne Alter finds peace in it. They don’t embrace so much as try to drown themselves in the other, and as Kagetora pulls back to breach the light-headed fog that’s settled over both of them, it’s with a murmur of, “I can handle your fire, remember?”

“You can right now,” Jeanne Alter replies. She still doesn’t look at Kagetora despite how close she is. Now it’s Kagetora’s breath stuttering, her mind wandering to some far-off plane, words whispered by even her closest retainers, who had found themselves unable to meet Kagetora’s gaze. She’s brought back by the hint of pain in Jeanne Alter’s voice, gnawing away at those memories. No one had spoken to her with such hurt in their tones, only anger; but here is Jeanne Alter, her voice suffused by only a plea, saying, “Someday you won’t be able to.”

“Do you remember who I am?” Kagetora asks her. Jeanne Alter glances up again, blinking back the tears brimming at the corners of her eyes. “I am Nagao Kagetora, the Dragon of Echigo. Who better to handle the Dragon Witch than another dragon?”

“You’re not actually a dragon,” Jeanne Alter protests, a half-hearted mumble. A pause, and then— “You’re the first person who’s called me that who I haven’t threatened to burn for it.”

“What happened to being afraid to burn me?” A puff of hot air wafts off the top of Jeanne Alter’s head, Kagetora’s snort of amusement. “I said it before, and I’ll repeat it. It’s my choice to stay with you, and I intend to continue doing so.” Kagetora presses her lips to Jeanne Alter’s forehead, shifting slightly, a slow, prolonged nuzzling. “This is what I want. It has nothing to do with righteousness and morals. If being burned by you is what that want entails, then so be it, but I won’t want it any less.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” Jeanne Alter breathes.

“It really is!” laughs Kagetora. “Stupid enough to be human, right? That’s what we agreed, isn’t it? I’ll be human for you, and you for me. Isn’t that what we said?”

“It’s what you said.”

“But I don’t hear you saying otherwise.” Kagetora’s fingertips play over Jeanne Alter’s lips, down her throat, spread and settle at the base of her collarbones. “If I’m going to be human, then I’ll be a selfish one. I’ll want all of you.”

“You can fucking have it,” Jeanne Alter growls against Kagetora’s chest. “But you have to know someone like me is damned. It won’t be that easy.”

“That’s fine.” Another soothing touch of Kagetora’s lips against hers, though scarcely felt through the weariness settling itself in her bones, the sleep she’s put off for so long arriving at last. “No matter where or what, I’ll come after you. That, I swear upon Bishamonten.”

“I’m holding you to it, Kagetora.” Her lips fumble around the shapes of the words, and quickly cease to move at all. Jeanne Alter’s eyes, long since closed, go still behind her eyelids; she’s drifted off, the warmth of Kagetora’s body and the familiarity of her own bed lulling her into an unguarded and lasting sleep.

As she expected, her dreams are of Shinjuku, filled with fire, and yet different. The streets between the skyscrapers are carpeted with churning red, but Jeanne Alter isn’t anywhere near them. She sits at the edge of a skyscraper beside Shinjuku Station, the cool wind whipping up from below easing the sting of the burns still visible against her legs. Around her chest, the only welcome heat she knows: Kagetora’s arms, holding her above the flames, steady and solid as if to say that this is more than just a dream.

* * *

A twinge of morning cold slides into the miniscule space between Jeanne Alter and Kagetora, attempting to pack itself in. Jeanne Alter wakes from her dream with a shiver, false neon stars dissolving into drab grey walls, the steady hum of Shinjuku against her ears replaced by the sporadic puff of Kagetora’s breathing.

Here’s a sight rarely encountered in this room: Jeanne Alter, pawing the sleep placidly from her eyes, her movements slow and peaceful. Kagetora’s arms still hang lightly around her hips, completely devoid of the crushing force the god of war is known for. Asleep, Kagetora would pass for any other human, no sharp knit of her eyebrows or clenching of her jaw to betray the presence of a greater power lurking within her. Actually, Jeanne Alter realizes, she’s quite soft. Everything from her robes to her skin to her hair is pleasantly silken to the touch, and with nothing to direct her smile, it’s loosened from its rigid state into an indistinct but satisfied curve.

Jeanne Alter pushes herself against Kagetora, squeezing that sliver of cold out from between them, knees knocking against the other’s. Kagetora’s eyes fly open, her hand twitching behind her as though in search of a weapon even before she’s awakened fully. When she does, her shoulders sink back into their prior positions, though her smile doesn’t change. It’s still fixed on Jeanne Alter, and just as natural, bringing a lightness with it to the otherwise murky depths of Kagetora’s stare. A quick shake of her head makes her hair fall into place— there’s those stupid black streaks of hers, Jeanne Alter thinks fondly— and she’s leaning in to stroke the knots out from Jeanne Alter’s hair.

It doesn’t feel like Kagetora to skip a morning greeting— or perhaps it would be, if the opposite had been expected her whole life. What she says is a muffled, “Did you sleep well?”

“Yeah,” Jeanne Alter says, tilting her head to stare into Kagetora’s face. “Thanks for staying with me.”

“It’s only natural. You asked it of me, after all.” At the confused twitch of Jeanne Alter’s head, she elaborates: “It’s my role as the avatar of Bishamonten to attend to what’s asked of me.”

“So, what?” Jeanne Alter bites at her lip, visibly lost in thought. Kagetora keeps staring, her expression inquisitive. Her cheeks flare red, and she turns and buries her face in Kagetora’s robes, mumbling incoherently.

“Jeanne Alter?” Kagetora’s voice sounds almost as if she’s teasing her. “You know I couldn’t hear that, right?”

“Shut up,” Jeanne Alter groans, lifting her head away just enough to let her voice slip free. “It’s too early for this.”

“You’re the one who woke up first,” Kagetora reminds her. “What is it?”

“I—” A deep breath, a carefully measured release of it in a poorly hidden sigh. “Look, if we’re going back to this ‘not being human’ thing, then that bastard Gilles’ wish makes me a holy maiden. You get it?”

“Does that mean you shouldn’t be sharing a bed with me?” Kagetora blinks, but before she can move to disengage herself, Jeanne Alter has flung an arm across her waist, anchoring them both to the bed.

“You dense idiot! Did you have to have everything spelled out for you like this when you were alive?” Her flush has crept up the bridge of her nose and snuck down along her neck; she can hardly look in Kagetora’s direction. “If you’re gonna stick with this whole ‘people believe in me so I’m a god’ thing, then I’ll take you up on that. But if I’m the one believing in you, we’re gonna change a few things.”

“Ah?” Kagetora settles against the bed, rolling onto her back and pulling Jeanne Alter along with her. “Like what?”

“Like— for starters, you’re mine.” Jeanne Alter bares her teeth, equal parts grin and snarl, and slams her palms down on either side of Kagetora’s shoulders. “You can do whatever with your Bishamonten thing, but you’d better not forget who you belong to.”

“Wouldn’t that be unfair?”

“That’s the fucking point.” The Alter’s smile turns hungry, bordering on ravenous. “Who wants a fair god? Besides my stupid original, that is. Give me everything you’ve got, and I’ll do the same, understand now?”

“Isn’t it a bit too early for jealousy?” Kagetora only laughs, the hands that come up to cup Jeanne Alter’s cheeks with coarse and calloused palms saying everything Kagetora doesn’t know how to. “Don’t worry so much about that. You already have an advantage.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“You’re the only one who understands me.” Kagetora’s fingers creep along the edges of Jeanne Alter’s hair, winding their way through. “So you already have all of my attention.”

“Am I gonna get a vision, then?” Jeanne Alter tilts her chin down, lets Kagetora’s fingers caress the back of her skull, a gesture that has no right being as soothing as it is. “A voice from heaven? My banner catching on fire, maybe? Some sort of divine revelation?”

“Where are you getting all this from?” Kagetora narrows her eyes, hopelessly puzzled. This isn’t the unsolvable enigma of human interaction, though; this is Jeanne Alter and her roundabout ways of trying to ask for something, that knowledge snug in Kagetora’s chest. She pushes back playfully— “I thought all you talked about was divine punishment.”

“That’s not happening.” Jeanne Alter sneers briefly at the ceiling, as though daring something to prove her wrong. “I’ve got a god on my side now. Isn’t that right?”

A god wouldn’t agree or disagree; but she is not a god, in the same way that she’s not entirely human. Kagetora’s found some tenuous balance of both, and now it occurs to her that maybe she hadn’t entirely been immune to Jeanne Alter’s fire, after all. Maybe it had burned away enough of her to let this, whatever it is, shine through. Kagetora lets herself gaze vacantly upward for a moment longer, watching the shimmer in Jeanne Alter’s eyes. She doesn’t understand fear, but she understands defiance, and Jeanne Alter’s laid it thick over everything else, though it doesn’t fool Kagetora.

(And perhaps, Kagetora realizes, that’s the point. Jeanne Alter couldn’t care less what anyone else thinks, but she doesn’t want Kagetora to be fooled.)

“You have me,” is Kagetora’s answer. Jeanne Alter isn’t as crass as to show her relief openly; what’s about to turn into a toss of her head is stopped by Kagetora bringing her down, inhaling the smoky aroma on her jacket before crushing her lips against the Alter’s. Jeanne Alter’s arms give out a second later, and the weight of her fall melds their bodies together. Kagetora refuses to let go, keeps her arms tight around Jeanne Alter’s back until they’re both breathless, white lights like stars dancing in their vision, and in the unlit darkness of Jeanne Alter’s room, it’s almost as if they’ve found the release of Shinjuku together all over again.

**Author's Note:**

> >   
_If I profane with my unworthiest hand_  
_This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:_  
_My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand_  
_To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss._  
_Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,_  
_Which mannerly devotion shows in this,_  
_For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,_  
_And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss._  
_Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?_  
_Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer._  
_O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do._  
_They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair._  
_Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake._  
_Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take._  
_Thus from my lips, by thine, my sin is purged._  
_Then have my lips the sin that they have took._  
_Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!_  
_Give me my sin again._
>> 
>> _\- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1.5.92-110)_  



End file.
